Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup – 800th Edition, 15 Years

Happy Sunday! It’s still better to be in America than anywhere else. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and things will turn around. This pinup is by Gil Elvgren, with a wee bit of help.

BTW, this is the 800th edition, and I started doing this on 4/3/2005. It evolved from just photos to all the linkage and stuff. 15 years.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. No Tricks Zone notes a German law professor and high court judge saying freedom should be limited for ‘climate change’
  2. Not A Lot Of People Know That covers the extra warm winter having nature’s fingerprints
  3. 357 Magnum notes the rising crime in Democrat run Philadelphia
  4. America’s Watchtower discusses Handsy Joe’s flip flop on travel restrictions
  5. Barking Moonbat EWS covers capitalism as a crime
  6. Blazing Cat Fur notes Americans turning hardline on interstate travel and fines for rule breakers
  7. Chicks On The Right discusses the Dem Hispanic caucus wanting all ICE detainees released
  8. Cold Fury notes that the numbers just aren’t adding up
  9. DC Clothesline covers Comrade Bernie wanting to give money to Hamas while Americans go broke
  10. Dioneses’ Middle Finger exposes how far CNN has fallen
  11. Geller Report News highlights the Dem Nevada governor hoarding medicine for prisoners over citizens
  12. IOTW Report has new and more info on the fish tank lady
  13. Jihad Watch covers a Muslim cleric hoping for up to 500 million dead in India
  14. Legal Insurrection notes the reality of the media accusing Trump of downplaying Bat Soup Virus
  15. And last, but not least, Maggie’s Farm discusses losing friends over politics

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.

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?

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup – 800th Edition, 15 Years »

CoC: People Suffering Is A Small Price To Pay To Solve The Climate Crisis

It’s a shame that the media is not focusing that much on ‘climate change’ in these days of Bat Soup Virus (I only made it to page 4 of Google News for climate change, stories from past 24 hours, before they became mostly about other things, with climate change either as something small or mentioned elsewhere on the page), because it would be an eye opener for the casual Warmist what the Cult of Climastrology really stands for

WHAT THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY

GRETA THUNBERG COULDN’T do it. Bill McKibben and 350.org couldn’t do it, and neither could the Paris climate accord. But Covid-19 is cutting human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as travel and other economic activity in much of the world slow or halt altogether.

While the contraction in CO2 emissions set off by the virus may not be as pronounced as the related though distinct fall in “conventional” pollutants like soot and smog, it is far more consequential. Soot and smog poison and kill only in the present, while greenhouse gases stick around to maim the climate for the next century. Burning a fossil fuel today is tantamount to signing a death warrant for future generations. Conversely, forgoing an action that would have caused a fossil fuel to be burned creates a permanent benefit.

If what is in bold is the case, why don’t Warmists give up their own use of fossil fuels?

Is it cruel to point approvingly to the steep reduction in carbon emissions now unfolding, given the skyrocketing deaths, lost livelihoods, and widespread privation? And won’t the reductions be negated as the virus is tamed and emissions come roaring back? No and no.

Insane people gleeful over this tragedy.

The suffering is a different story. Were a happiness/misery calculator able to quantify the pluses and minuses to well-being from events befalling human society, the coronavirus’s flattening of the rising CO2-in-the-atmosphere curve would obviously be swamped by the lost life and the disordering of business as usual.

And yet business as usual must come to an end if we are to hand down a livable planet to our children.

The rub is how to slash carbon emissions with minimum suffering and maximum social and economic justice, and without nature forcing the reductions on us via pandemics or other chaotic black swan events that are surely in store.

Yes, that is the rub, one which the Cultists have failed to offer solutions to. Because they don’t have them. I’m not saying their policies would make the world look like it does right now, but, what, maybe half of what we’re seeing?

Second, the crisis is helping us see just how much our well-being depends on muscular, proactive governance. Government of the people and for the people is literally the thing that’s now needed more than ever.  The people must be sovereign over corporations and not vice versa — a point driven home by the tepid response of big business to Trump’s exhortations to step up manufacture of equipment to protect health care workers.

Interestingly, this fails to say that people should be sovereign over government. This is a clarion call for authoritative big government, the type that tells you where you may go and when. They type that arrests people for making their own choice to attend parties and churches. The type that applies laws and rules however they like, such as arresting a guy for paddleboarding despite not being near anyone. You have people snitching on neighbors for going out, even for exercise. There are even snitch lines established by government (and not just in the UK). You have government assuming more and more power for itself, like in Kentucky. Do Warmists consider that they themselves will be subject to the whims of government?

As for the super-rich, never have their fortunes been so fully revealed as hollow and corrosive. Worldwide, the wealthiest 5 percent of households collectively burn more carbon than the entire bottom half, according to a comprehensive new report from the University of Leeds. Could the past decade’s research and agitation on economic inequality now culminate, in the pandemic’s wake, in an insistence on transmuting extreme private wealth into a new collectively shared wealth of renewable energy and sustainable communities?

This, more than fossil fuel divestment or class-action litigation, is the kind of program that will actually cast off the yoke of the fossil fuel empire upon which the portfolios of the super-rich depend. In the process, the toxic aspiration to join the super-rich could be swept aside. Bye-bye, lusting after commuter helicopters. Bye-bye, hungering for one’s own island. Bye-bye, legislatures purchased by dark money.

This really isn’t about ‘climate change’, is it. And now they are using the suffering of billions to push their cult.

Read: CoC: People Suffering Is A Small Price To Pay To Solve The Climate Crisis »

Super TDS Take: China’s Wet Markets Are Safer Than America’s Supermarkets

This is what you get when the U.S. media hates Trump so much that they take China’s side. This is taking the notion of attempting to score points to hatred

Here we go

Here’s one more issue to add to the bonfire of tensions with China brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The country is reportedly reopening its wet markets, the fresh produce stalls associated with Covid-19’s early spread in Wuhan.

It’s understandable that countries now in the grip of the first wave of infection might be outraged. Many blame wet markets for starting the outbreak in the first place. Opening them again, at a moment when thousands are dying overseas, seems emblematic of Beijing’s increasingly chauvinistic approach to world affairs.

Animals in wet markets are penned and slaughtered or sold live right next to stalls selling fruit and vegetables. Conditions, as my colleague Adam Minter has written, are often less than hygienic.

Places where a range of common and exotic animals mix together while bodily fluids flow freely may seem a fertile breeding ground for the virulent novel diseases that cross the species barrier to humans and occasionally become pandemics.

At the same time, let’s put the outrage on pause. Wet markets are increasingly losing ground to supermarkets in China. If they’re showing resilience as suppliers of fresh goods, it’s precisely because consumers regard them as a healthier and more sustainable alternative.

A lot of people think supplements are better than vaccines. These anti-vaxxers are lambasted in the media, and rightly so. This is just more of the media protecting China over Donald Trump.

Read: Super TDS Take: China’s Wet Markets Are Safer Than America’s Supermarkets »

If All You See…

…is an evil air conditioner causing Bad Weather, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jihad Watch, with a post on France not enforcing lockdown in the Muslim no-go zones.

Doubleshot under the fold, so, check out Just One Minute, with a post on NYC’s mayor urging that doctors be drafted.

Read More »

Read: If All You See… »

Apparently, Marijuana Stores Are Considered “Essential” In California

What about the cookie stores that are next door to them? Anyhow, one doctor is rather upset over this, as she writes to the LA Times

Letters to the Editor: Pot vaping was ruining lungs before COVID-19, and now cannabis is ‘essential’?

As an emergency physician, I believe treating marijuana shops as essential businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic is shameful.

Has everyone forgotten about the vaping-related pneumonias that were killing young people before COVID-19 swept the world? The main association between fatalities and the acute respiratory failure we were seeing was the use of vaping products containing marijuana.

Curiously, the ground-glass appearance on radiologic studies now associated with COVID-19 was first seen in the vaping-related pneumonias. Additionally the “new and improved” legal marijuana seems to have a very different effect on people than the marijuana of the 1980 and ’90s.

At a time like this when healthcare providers are going to be swamped with victims of COVID-19, we want to be minimizing people’s risk for respiratory illness and avoiding the need for psychiatric beds for violent, impaired individuals.

I guess for some it’s essential, like beer, wine, and hard liquor is essential for others. It can certainly help people get through these times. And, personally, I don’t care if someone wants to get high. Again, I used to smoke it a lot, but, don’t anymore. I just don’t find it interesting.

But, that’s not really my point. The same state didn’t consider firearms stores as essential, you know, things that can actually help defend if society breaks down

(The Hill) The National Rifle Association (NRA) and other pro-gun groups filed a lawsuit against California on Friday after the state forced gun stores to close under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) shelter-in-place order amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Under Newsom’s order, these stores are considered nonessential. The complaint demands that gun shops in California be deemed essential and reopened.

Thankfully, society hasn’t broken down. We aren’t seeing a rise in crime, especially violent crime. What happens if this continues? No idea. Let’s not speculate. But, if it does, don’t you want protection? Especially when law enforcement is being sent out to arrest a guy on a paddleboard.

Read: Apparently, Marijuana Stores Are Considered “Essential” In California »

Climate Cult: Huge Drop In CO2 From Bat Soup Virus, But We Still Need Massive Policy Changes

Haven’t the members of the Cult of Climastrology been screaming and screeching for everyone to reduce their carbon footprint for 25+ years?

Covid-19: Biggest drop in CO2 emissions since WWII but little impact on climate change

Though scientists expect carbon emissions to fall by 5% in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic is having very little impact on climate change, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

A new forecast produced by climate experts of the Global Carbon Project which produces widely-watched annual emissions estimates, predicts that carbon dioxide emissions could fall by the largest amount since World War Two.

Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University in California who chairs the Project, said carbon output could fall by more than 5% this year - the first dip since a 1.4% reduction after the 2008 financial crisis.

“Neither the fall of the Soviet Union nor the various oil or savings and loan crises of the past 50 years are likely to have affected emissions the way this crisis is,” he added.

But experts warn that without structural change, the emissions declines caused by coronavirus could be short-lived and have little impact on the concentrations of carbon dioxide that have accumulated in the atmosphere over decades.

So, wait, they’re saying that a reduction in “carbon pollution” output won’t make a difference? That’s weird. And that the only thing that would make a difference is to implement all sorts of taxes and fees and take away your freedom and choice, handing it all over to Government? Huh. It’s almost like this is a scam.

Any reductions in pollution and carbon dioxide emissions are likely to be temporary, said Lars Peter Riishojgaard, from the infrastructure department of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a United Nations agency based in Geneva.

“It does not mean much for climate,” he told a virtual press conference.

Riishojgaard said there was a lot of media speculation about what impact the global pandemic might have on the climate, greenhouse gas emissions and longer-term global warming.

“While in the short term, carbon dioxide emissions would go down as cars stay put and aircraft remain on the ground, “we expect the impact will be fairly short-lived,” Riishojgaard said.

“The pandemic will be over at some point and the world will start going back to work and with that, the CO2 emissions will pick up again, maybe or maybe not to quite the same level.”

Let’s consider: they’re estimating a 5% reduction of CO2 output from Bat Soup Virus. The original Paris Climate Agreement wanted a reduction of 20% overall in order to avoid a 2C increase. And now Warmists are calling for a 7.6% decrease per year till 2030 to avoid their mythical 1.5C increase.

How does 5% feel right now? Are you enjoying it? Ask the average Warmist if they are enjoying it. Ask them if they want their lives to be like this for the next decade. See what they say. It’s easy for the bigshots in the CoC to make these pronouncements, because they certainly won’t live the 7.6% life. They’ll jet off around the world and live the high life.

Read: Climate Cult: Huge Drop In CO2 From Bat Soup Virus, But We Still Need Massive Policy Changes »

Jim Acosta Dragged For Interrupting Dr. Birx: “An Effort To Score Points”

While Fox News is leading with Dear Diary Jim Acosta “mansplaining” to Dr. Birx, the focus should be on the scoring points part

CNN’s Jim Acosta blasted for ‘mansplaining’ after interrupting Dr. Birx to attack Trump

CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta was widely blasted for interrupting Dr. Deborah Birx during Friday’s coronavirus briefing to attack President Trump.

Birx took a moment at the podium to address the “who knew what when” concerns and said all the countries affected by the pandemic can “look back” to develop a timeline but not while “in the middle” of the crisis.

“We can talk about why didn’t Italy do something or Spain do something or Germany do something, or we can really say right now — we all can do something,” Dr. Birx explained. “We can do the social distancing and all of the pieces that we know is starting to work around the globe in country after country. And then when we get through all of this, we can ask the questions about could we have done some piece of this better as a global community.”

She spent a bit more time discussing WHO and what they said earlier this year, and then

Acosta quickly derailed her observations about WHO to knock President Trump.

“Dr. Birx, the president was saying this was going to go away,” Acosta said. “It’s April.”

“It is going to go away,” President Trump fired back. “I said it was going away and it is going away.”

First, the problem with interrupting her and not even being on topic with what she was saying. Some discussed him attempting to mansplain, a term I despise, as it means that women aren’t strong enough. And, let’s be honest, people try to ‘splain things to people regardless of biological sex. Others noted that Acosta interrupted as she was smacking around WHO, which has been protecting China from criticism. But, this one really hits the mark

“Jim Acosta’s interruption of Dr. Birx is an example of how CNN’s echo-journalism model is destroying the media’s credibility,” George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley reacted. “Every question from Acosta is an effort to score points rather than elicit information. It is a press pandemic that continues to rage without relief.”

“Score points.” That pretty much sums up the media. They aren’t looking for information. With a Republican in office they try and score points, and it is even worse now than when George W. Bush was in office. Of course, they always try and score points against Republicans, and attempted to score points against anyone attacking Democrats and Barack Obama. This is what modern Journalism is all about.

Read: Jim Acosta Dragged For Interrupting Dr. Birx: “An Effort To Score Points” »

In Case You Missed It, Progressive Towns Which Banned Plastic Bags Now Turning To Them

Isn’t the climate crisis the most important crisis facing us? More so than Bat Soup Virus?

San Francisco reverses ban on plastic bags, now bars reusable totes

San Francisco has reversed its 13-year ban on plastic bags and will now prohibit the reusable bags city leaders once championed because of the coronavirus.

The city announced the switch this week as part of its plan to curb the spread of coronavirus. Barring customers from bringing reusable bags, mugs and other household items into stores was adopted as a measure “to prevent unnecessary contact.”

San Francisco is not the only place that has reversed its reusable bag policy, but it is certainly the most surprising. The city was at the forefront of eliminating single-use plastic bags in 2007.

At that time, San Francisco’s board of supervisors linked plastic bags to a litany of scourges, including litter, climate change, big oil and endangering sea life.

But the coronavirus has changed all of that. As of Thursday afternoon, California was one of the states most ravaged by the virus, reporting 10,000 cases and 200 deaths in its population of almost 40 million.

Yes, we do need to reduce the use of single use plastic, and positively incent people to recycle and reuse.

In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu issued an executive order on March 21 directing stores to use only new paper or plastic bags they provide and to refuse to allow customers to use their reusable ones.

Well, that went the other way. I constantly reuse them. I keep a couple in my car for when I stop at Lidle.

Illinois, Massachusetts and Maine have imposed similar bans, or in some cases suspended their own state laws encouraging reusable bags.

Retailers across the country have jumped on board. Target has halted the sale of reusable bags, asking customers who bring bags from home to fill them at checkout.

I’m guessing real world issues are more important than ‘climate change.’

Read: In Case You Missed It, Progressive Towns Which Banned Plastic Bags Now Turning To Them »

If All You See…

…is a cactus that will soon be growing in Alaska due to the climate crisis, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jo Nova, with a post on 27 feet of social distancing.

Read: If All You See… »

Surprise: Lots Of Liberals Are Buying Guns During Bat Soup Virus Emergency

Well, this is a heck of a thing, gun grabbers putting aside their gun grabbing beliefs for their own protection

Yes, Plenty Of Liberals Are Buying Guns Too

The record number of firearms sold in March weren’t all purchased by Trump-loving Republicans in red states, despite claims by gun control activists that the surge in sales is all due to fearmongering on the part of the NRA. As it turns out, the desire to protect yourself and your loved ones is non-partisan, and even the New Yorker is recognizing that many of the 1-million or more new gun owners around the country don’t fit neatly into the anti-gun stereotype of the typical Second Amendment supporter.

The magazine’s Charles Bethea reports on a recent trip to Gorge Guns in Hood River, Oregon, where owner Erika Bales has been busy with customers new and old. Among the customers opening her door for the very first time was a woman in her 60s looking for something she could use for home defense. (snip)

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Post-Gazette newspaper also found self-described progressives purchasing firearms for self-defense.

After standing in line at a Pittsburgh-area sporting goods store for more than an hour, not knowing what he would say to the sales clerk, the self-described “liberal Democrat from New York City” bought a gun. He said it was an impulse buy, not a “panic.”…

“The stock market is tanking. I’m well-read enough to know that puts the onus on people to feel differently about how commodities are traded and how people will act,” said the gun-purchasing anesthesiologist, who lives in Fox Chapel and works in Pittsburgh.

I’ve actually spoken to a few shop owners and they report the same thing around here.

It will be interesting to see just how many folks on the left side of the political aisle discover a newfound appreciation for the Second Amendment, and how many of them in places like coastal California, Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts end up discovering that the gun control laws and anti-gun politicians they may have supported in the past are actually making it impossible for them to acquire a firearm during the current emergency.

Will lots of Democrats switch over to being 2nd Amendment supporters, especially those who purchased themselves? Or, will they pretend they do not have a gun? Think about all the celebs, such as Alyssa Milano, who have firearms but want to restrict others (Alyssa has 2). And Democrat Gabby Giffords, who herself has a firearm, as does her husband.

Read: Surprise: Lots Of Liberals Are Buying Guns During Bat Soup Virus Emergency »

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