Your Fault: San Francisco Seeing Climate (scam) Driven Rat Explosion

It couldn’t possibly be due to San Fran being an open sewer full of people literally shitting and peeing in the streets, right? Or all the trash, right? Or businesses fleeing the city, leaving lots of unused buildings perfect for rats to breed in, right? No, it has to be a slight increase in global temperatures over the course of 170 years

‘Infinite sea of rats’: SF’s rodent population may be exploding
The city’s climate change-driven surge in rodents puts it second only to — please don’t laugh — D.C.

Rikki Ercoli has lived off San Francisco’s Market Street for 19 years, but he never saw rats until this year. At night, he says, he glances through his bay windows and sees them scurrying. And they’re not small ones, either.

“They’re pretty fat,” Ercoli, a photographer, said. “The trash room is directly below me, and I see them running out in packs of two and three.”

Of all the urban woes that keep San Francisco residents up at night — an owner move-in eviction, losing your homeowners insurance, the Big One — few afflictions match the mundane horror of a rat infestation. Their size startles us. They make a mess. They’re embarrassing.

And their numbers may be increasing — dramatically.

Are they increasing or not? They’re writing a fearmongering article without knowing if the rat population is increasing or not.

A study of 16 major cities (14 in North America, plus Amsterdam and Tokyo) over an average of 12 years published in Science Advances last month found that climate change is fueling a hemisphere-wide population boom for Rattus rattus, or the black rat. In the case of San Francisco, the population has grown by more than 10% — more than every other city in the study besides Washington, D.C.

Yeah, that study is full of lots of mights, ifs, maybes, we thinks, based on computer models and shoddy statistics.

Jokes about a rodent infestation in the nation’s capital aside, there’s nothing funny about what’s going on here in San Francisco. Rodolfo Dirzoa, a professor of environmental science at Stanford University who was not involved in the original study, said the findings are consistent with what he sees happening in the Bay Area. He said another point in the study is hugely significant: the increasing loss of vegetation.

“The reduction of population regulation associated with the loss or decline of natural biodiversity,” Dirzo wrote via email, “creates an ideal synergy for rat proliferation.”

Well, maybe don’t cut all the trees and shrubs down. Heck, there are plenty of empty buildings that could be turned into residential.

Fragmented ecosystems give rats opportunities to thrive, causing what Dirzo calls a “rodentation” of the city. Exterminator Maria Talacona, co-founder of the Bay Area’s Mighty Men Pest Control, is all too familiar with it. “We’re definitely seeing an increase in rodent activity anywhere buildings are extremely close together,” Talacona said, adding that this living nightmare is “my favorite thing to talk about.”

An inability to walk around all four sides of a building creates spaces where humans can’t leave their scent behind. That signals that a place is safe to burrow and build nests. “It gives them a very strong advantage, because we can’t get to them.” The other pathway for an infestation is garage doors. If they don’t close tightly, rats can get inside.

So, it is a manmade issue, but, nothing to do with climate doom

Climate change, Talacona added, is very likely messing with local rats’ predators, such as raptors and garter snakes. (The carnivorous California squirrels that made headlines late last year seem content to eat only voles … for now.)

Or, it could be due to paving everything and biosphere loss. Anyhow, here we go

However, Talacona said that in her experience, the other reason for the exploding rat population is the state’s new approach to rat poison. To protect the health of birds, mountain lions, and other animals that may consume poisoned rats, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2024 that prohibited the use of anticoagulant rodenticides, leading the Center for Biological Diversity to crow that “California OKs strongest rat poison restrictions in nation.” Talacona likened that approach to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

And there we go, it’s damned near impossible to do anything to stop the rats from breeding.

Read: Your Fault: San Francisco Seeing Climate (scam) Driven Rat Explosion »

If All You See…

…is an area flooding from carbon pollution Bad Weather, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on the radical vegan trans death cult.

Read: If All You See… »

Democrats Upset Republicans Running Circles Around Them Online

Well, it’s not really hard when Democrats are supporting keeping fraud, waste, worthless federal employees, and so much more that the American citizens do not want

Dems concede Republicans ‘running circles’ around them online as Trump remakes Washington

The Department of Government Efficiency created its own account on X last November, amassing 4 million followers with a stream of news on contract cancellations and other cuts to the bureaucracy. Elon Musk has posted relentlessly on the social media platform he owns, promoting his own voice on an algorithm he controls.

The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, started a rapid response account in January with about 121,000 followers, a fraction of DOGE’s reach. And Democrats held traditional rallies outside the USAID and Treasury buildings, where Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, was mocked on late-night TV and by even some within his own party after leading a chant of “We will win!”

It was a halting response by Democrats to a flood of pro-DOGE messaging. And what was worse, according to interviews with more than a dozen Democratic elected officials and strategists, was that they were doing it on the wrong platform — convening a conventional show of resistance for local and national TV cameras, as Schumer did while holding a carton of eggs, while largely leaving unanswered the torrent of MAGA orthodoxy and, in many cases, disinformation online.

In the online war, said Chi Ossé, a Democratic New York City councilman who has built an online following through his short-form, explanatory videos, you “don’t see those folks anywhere.”

“Trump and Republicans have been able to grasp different types of media in how to get their message across that impacts society as a whole, and I do believe that Dem leadership is missing the mark, not only in the election but in our resistance 2.0,” Ossé said. “We need to be active in every medium.”

It’s not the messaging, it’s the message. “Hey, the federal government is wasting your taxpayer money big time. We’re hiring people who are unqualified and/or wackos with agendas. We’re forcing your female children to have unhinged males who think they’re female in their safe spaces and sports. We’re sending your money to far flung nations for insane projects and a good chunk disappears into the pockets of who knows. And so much more.” How’s that working out. But, it’s not just on social media

If you read the full transcript of the exchange it gets much, much worse. The Credentialed Media doesn’t seem to understand that their schtick doesn’t work anymore. No one believes it. Americans deride it. Sure, the public school systems have been atrocious at teaching history, like WWII, but, Americans are not as stupid as the Democrats think they are.

Read: Democrats Upset Republicans Running Circles Around Them Online »

‘Climate Change’ Making Things Harder On First Responders Or Something

And you’ll never guess why

How climate change puts additional strain on first responders job duties

In Lowville, New York, the sheriff’s department is bracing for a harsher winter season as climate change makes lake-effect snow more intense and unpredictable. Experts predict that these weather conditions are likely to worsen, creating even more challenges for police and first responders across the country.

Sheriff Mike Carpinelli of Lewis County said that the region’s snowstorms can quickly intensify, sometimes accumulating a foot of snow in just a couple of hours.

“You can’t always see it coming,” he said, emphasizing the difficulty in preparing for such rapid changes in weather. (snip)

According to Dan Horton, who runs Northwestern University’s Climate Change Research Group, the warming climate is contributing to more intense lake-effect snow.

“It certainly seems like the new normal as the planet continues to warm,” Horton says.

Horton said that due to fossil fuel and global warming, lakes are warming and not freezing as much in the winter.

Good grief. These people. It really is a cult. No matter the issue the answer is always global boiling.

Read: ‘Climate Change’ Making Things Harder On First Responders Or Something »

Interesting: Migrant Centers Empty Of New Fake Asylum Seekers

When you say and do things that entice illegals/fake asylum seekers to stream into the U.S. they will. When you do the opposite you get the opposite

San Diego migrant shelter closes after no new arrivals since Trump took office; over 100 employees laid off

A San Diego migrant shelter is closing its doors and laying off more than 100 employees because of funding and policy changes under the Trump administration.

The Jewish Family Service of San Diego, which has operated a regional migrant shelter for over six years, announced it will close its facility and lay off 115 employees due to “changes in federal funding and policy.”

“Jewish Family Service of San Diego (JFS) is working to meet the evolving needs of the community in response to recent and anticipated federal policy changes,” the organization previously said.

The non-governmental organization (NGO) said they have not received new asylum-seeking families or individuals since the CBP One phone app went down on Jan. 20.

Hint: we don’t want you. Stay home. Go elsewhere.

Migrant shelters nearly empty at Texas border

Migrant shelters along the Texas-Mexico border are nearly empty after President Donald Trump’s actions effectively shut the border to asylum seekers.

Under former President Joe Biden’s administration, migrant shelters across Texas played a key role in assisting migrants with food, shelter and other necessities until migrants reached their final destination.

Migrants arrived at shelters after being processed by Border Patrol officials and given court dates. Some shelters in Texas received up to 1,000 migrants per day, and during peak periods of illegal crossings, many shelters exceeded capacity.

Illegal crossings have plummeted across the southern border to just an average of 600 per day after Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration and messaging on mass deportations. Even before the 2024 election, illegal crossings were trending downward resulting in shelters receiving fewer migrants.

Ruben Garcia, the director of an El Paso-based migrant shelter network, told the Texas Tribune that there are approximately 40 people currently staying in the shelters.

Due to the reduced number of migrants, Garcia said that only four of the more than 20 network shelters are open at this time, and he is likely to shutter more by the end of the month. Ultimately, he said, only one or two shelters will remain open.

Bummer. Let’s keep them closed.

Read: Interesting: Migrant Centers Empty Of New Fake Asylum Seekers »

If All You See…

…is the colors of an Evil carbon polluting nation, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Right Scoop, with a post HHS firing thousands of employees.

It’s fishing week!

Read: If All You See… »

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

Happy Sunday! Another wonderful day in Returned America. Getting some well needed rain, a mockingbird has decided he likes singing on my porch, and US beat Canada 3-1. This pinup is by Robert Skemp, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Not A Lot Of People Know That: US Wildfires Much More Extensive In Past, Says New Study
  2. Real Climate Science: Is New York About To Drown?
  3. Watts Up With That?: Sorry, CNN, No “Cow Fart” Vaccine Is Necessary or Will Stop Climate Change
  4. American Greatness: The Genius of the DOGE Exposures
  5. Bearing Arms: Bill Seeks to End Financial Industry’s Discrimination Toward Gun Companies
  6. Chicks On The Right: Egypt is Suddenly Interested in Rebuilding Gaza
  7. Gates Of Vienna: One Deported, a Hundred Brought In: What Could Go Wrong?
  8. Geller Report: Massive Sell-Off in Washington DC Housing Market – the Most Expensive in The Nation
  9. IOTW Report: Hundreds of Texas National Guardsmen Deputized for Immigration Enforcement
  10. Jihad Watch: Germany: Mother withdraws daughter from school trip to mosque, school threatens to fine her
  11. Legal Insurrection: House Panel Demands Columbia University Hand Over Disciplinary Records of Anti-Israel Protesters
  12. Moonbattery: Panic as Party Ends for Corrupt Swamp Rats
  13. neo-neocon: Why is the Democratic Party continuing to move to the left, when even its own voters don’t want it to?
  14. Pacific Pundit: California communist Rep. Robert Garcia calls for left wing radicals to “bring weapons” to their fight against Trump, Musk and DOGE
  15. And last, but, not least, The American Conservative has Donald Trump Is Realizing Jules Verne’s Dreams

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, so, most are hosted internally). 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 »

Good News: Biden Completely Failing At Installing At Installing EV Chargers Is Not His Fault

It’s definitely Someone Else’s fault. Especially in those pesky states. This is a pretty crazy opinion piece at the Washington Post

Why the government built only 58 EV charging stations in three years

Electric vehicleIt was one of the proudest moments of the Biden administration: Charging stations for electric vehicles “will be up and as easy to find as gas stations are now,” the president told cheering autoworkers at the Detroit Auto Show in 2022. The bipartisan infrastructure law he signed earlier in his term set aside $5 billion to fill in the gaps of a network of 500,000 charging stations that would stretch seamlessly across the nation by 2030.

Private companies were already installing charging stations by then — but mostly in urban areas with lots of EVs. Rural areas in particular were left underserved. The law would solve that problem by installing between 1,000 and 1,500 publicly funded stations in the places private companies wouldn’t want to invest in. Nobody would be stranded on Thanksgiving on the way to Grandma’s because their car ran out of electrons.

In fairness, it doesn’t take long to install level 2 chargers at someone’s house, even if they have to install a second fuse box. The electricity is there. Installing level 1, 2, and 3 chargers, especially 3, out somewhere can take a bit more time. I watched them take about 6 months to run the lines for a level 3 with just 2 charging ports at a dealership. Permits, digging, running lines, turning it on. But, still, I also watched Tesla install about 6 (maybe more, can only see so many when I drive by them near the gym) in about 3 months in Knightdale.

But more than three years after President Joe Biden signed that law, a mere 58 new charging stations are in operation. President Donald Trump regularly cites that paltry figure as evidence of the incompetence of the federal bureaucracy. His administration, no fan of electric cars, is already trying to claw back the money. So what should have been a triumph of progressive policymaking has instead devolved into humiliation.

Is humiliation a strong enough word?

By the point the Biden administration turned its attention to expanding the nation’s EV charging infrastructure, the approach that FDR might have taken during the 1930s — just hiring people to do it — was entirely off the table. Such a plan would immediately be labeled a “socialist” enterprise that posed a threat to private companies.

When they considered passing and implementing this they should have maybe, you know, considered exactly how the f*** they would actually run the project. This is government in a nutshell: here’s a law, here’s money, make it happen. Would this be acceptable if you were hiring a contractor to say, build an add-on to your house? Wouldn’t you want to know how they were going to do it, and be pretty pissed if they were just winging it? I mean, hell, they could have trained a boatload of the deadweight federal employees to do this.

Instead, the Biden administration was left to rely in large part on the system that governs 90 percent of federal transportation spending: distributing the money to the states. This pattern, established during the Eisenhower administration, works by sending federal dollars to the state highway departments that maintain the nation’s infrastructure. Each state figures out how to implement the law, which in this case called for high-speed chargers at least every 50 miles on major highways.

And, obviously, no one, especially the guy who should have been checking, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Biden as the “CEO”, bothered to follow up and make sure that the states were contracting the work out so the chargers actually got installed. And, really, how many companies are capable of doing this? Especially those who were not already contracted to install them?

Anyhow, it’s the states’ fault

The states, of course, had no experience with EV technology. And so it was up to the federal government to help them navigate their new responsibilities. The Transportation and Energy departments quickly established a “joint office” to guide the work. Within weeks of the infrastructure law’s signing — lightning speed by modern standards — the administration had published a draft rule establishing the requirements:

In other words, Los Federales slapped tons of requirements onto the projects, making it less likely for companies to want to get involved.

Government, in essence, is slow not by incompetence but by design. And it’s not just one law; the government’s inability to function today is the result of decades of procedural guardrails designed to prevent government from doing bad things.

Don’t discount incompetence.

We’ve created wildlife protections, and environmental study mandates, and opportunities for public comment, and new rights to sue that stand in the way of expeditious progress. Some states, for example, wanted to contract directly with their local utilities to erect the EV chargers, but federal statutes require a bidding process lest any contractor get a sweetheart deal.

Slow, incompetent, and bureaucratic. Skipping to the end (though, worth reading the whole thing)

The EV charging station tale marks what amounts to a “Wizard of Oz” moment for progressives. They want to prevent abuse and use government to serve the greater good. But as its snail-like rollout demonstrates, government today is more like the man behind the curtain than the great and powerful Oz. Progressives need to figure out how they will address the overcorrections of the past several decades and, in so doing, make government work again.

I wonder how much of the money simply disappeared into the pockets of federal bureaucrats, state employees, and contractors with little to no work?

Read: Good News: Biden Completely Failing At Installing At Installing EV Chargers Is Not His Fault »

If All You See…

…is a mountain that surely lost its glacier due to carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Cold Fury, with a post asking if crazy legislation is a joke.

Read: If All You See… »

Weird: NC State Implements Hiring Freeze Due To Federal Money Freeze

Trump and Elon are just so awful!

NC State hiring freeze: Faculty, staff positions on hold amid federal budget uncertainty

North Carolina State University Executive Vice Chancellor Warwick Arden told college deans, vice provosts and senior vice provosts on Friday that he was implementing an immediate “pause on all hiring activities” in response to uncertainty about the federal budget.

“Given the uncertain impacts of the presidential administration’s Executive Orders and guidance, the potential shut down of the federal government on March 14, and financial challenges that the state government is dealing with, leadership is becoming increasingly concerned with our budgets over the next year or two,” Arden wrote in part in a memorandum. (snip)

The Trump administration has issued dozens of executive orders, some of which involve freezing federal grants and loans that go to college campuses. Woodson told WRAL News that his university receives more than 400 federal grants and contracts. The university received $416 million in federal funding in 2023-24.

The freeze only covers NC State, not the rest of the UNC university system. And then there’s

Teachers fear shuttering Department of Education will diminish vital programs

Heather Stambaugh, a high school teacher in rural Ohio, said she sees the impact of federal funding every day in her classrooms.

It opens up opportunities for individual aides to work one-on-one with high-need students, she said, or to lead small group learning sessions that help students achieve “light bulb” moments they may not have otherwise.

“At the end of the day, this is the next generation of doctors and lawyers, business executives,” Stambaugh told ABC News. “But they’re not going to have as many opportunities if we don’t have enough staff and we don’t have the tools.”

Federal funds from the Department of Education support programs, resources and sometimes even staffing to address educational barriers faced by low-income, low-performing, disabled and rural students, among others.

If the department is dismantled, as President Donald Trump and some Republican lawmakers have said they hope to do, public school K-12 educators fear these programs could be diminished.

Here’s the problem in both related cases: schools are way, way, way too dependent on federal money. And guidance and control, of course. That money should be kept closer to home, where it can be watched and audited. Do we know what that taxpayer money is being used for? Does anyone in the federal government check, or, do they say “here’s a bunch of money, have fun”? This is why the size of the federal government workforce needs to be reduced, why their control of far away, unknown schools and everything associated needs to be drastically reduced.

Isn’t 46 Years Of Failure Enough? Time To Kill The Education Dept.

Good article, you’re welcome to read it. And, for Democrats who love the ED, consider that enabling all that federal control means that a president like Donald Trump can come in with a chainsaw, because he has that authority. He can put out Executive Orders restricting federal funding to schools that push the transcrazy agenda. I don’t agree with the gender confused agenda, but, shouldn’t that be up to the individual states? That’s why the Constitution was written in a specific manner.

Read: Weird: NC State Implements Hiring Freeze Due To Federal Money Freeze »

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