Your Fault: Expect More Bomb Cyclones Due To Carbon Pollution

By William Teach December 27, 2022 – 8:23 am

We can solve this with a tax, you know. And remembering that this is what is known as “winter”

Expect more ‘bomb cyclones’, courtesy climate change

A severe winter storm or ‘bomb cyclone’ has seized large parts of the United States and Canada, enveloping them in snow and rain. Several video clips out of affected areas seem straight out of apocalyptic movies. Such events may become more common with global warming not being abated any time soon.

The bomb cyclone is a mid-latitude storm fuelled by the interaction of cold Arctic air and warm air over subtropical regions. The storm named Elliot has taken the lives of more than 30 people and affected around 250 million people across the US and Canada.

Elliot has caused record levels of snowfall, rainfall and winds in many regions, all across the United States, right from the border with Canada up to the border with Mexico, an expanse of more than 3,000 kilometres.

Heck, at this time it’s still snowing in the Buffalo and Watertown, NY areas.

The rapid intensification was caused by the interaction of the low-pressure system with the cold air from the Arctic. An undulating polar jet stream across the Arctic region brought the cold air so far south.

The undulation of the polar jet stream — a swift swirling band of winds that encircles the Earth — usually happens during winter months. The formation of a bomb cyclone is rather rare. But it happened in 2019 as well.

The Arctic region warms much faster than the rest of the world. This happens due to a positive feedback climate mechanism called the albedo effect, as ice is reflective and returns a large part of the sun’s rays back to the atmosphere.(snip)

As the Earth warms further due to human-emitted greenhouse gases, such events could become much more frequent in the near future — one of the many impacts of climate change.

So, extreme winter weather is created by *checks notes* heat trapping gases? Good grief.

Read: Your Fault: Expect More Bomb Cyclones Due To Carbon Pollution »

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State Democrats Are Super Excited To Criminalize “Election Misinformation”

By William Teach December 27, 2022 – 8:06 am

Now, just imagine this NY Times article was about Republicans passing legislation that makes sure that the person voting is who they say they are. How would that go? (Free at Yahoo News)

Democrats, Feeling New Strength, Plan to Go on Offense on Voting Rights

For the past two years, Democrats in battleground states have played defense against Republican efforts to curtail voting access and amplify doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections.

Curtail = one person one vote. Might I remind the NY Times about the caterwauling from Democrats over 2000, 2004, and 2016?

Now it is Democrats, who retained all but one of the governor’s offices they hold and won control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, who are ready to go on offense in 2023. They are putting forward a long list of proposals that include creating automatic voter registration systems, preregistering teenagers to vote before they turn 18, returning the franchise to felons released from prison and criminalizing election misinformation.

Criminalizing? I’d like to read more about that. Surely the Times’ reporter will ask questions on that, right?

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a fellow Democrat, said that while her office worked to carry out the election changes approved by voters, she would like to see sweeping new rules and penalties for disseminating and amplifying misinformation that interferes with voting — things such as flyers or mailers with the wrong dates for an election or deceptive language on petitions that are gathered for proposed ballot amendments.

“The greatest threats to our democracy right now continue to be the intentional spread of misinformation and the threats and harassment of election officials that emerge from those efforts,” Benson said. “We owe it to voters on all sides to ensure we are seeking accountability for anyone who would intentionally try to essentially block someone from voting through misinformation.”

Benson said she believed the measures she was seeking would withstand any challenges on First Amendment grounds.

So, if I make a joke about election day being on a Wednesday, that’s not just room for being permanently suspended from Twitter, but, being prosecuted for a crime? Deceptive language has always been a part of politicalspeak, including petitions, mailers, etc. You can bet that prosecutions will only go one way. And what else will they try and do? I doubt this survives lawsuits. But, this is what Democrats do: attempt to stifle Wrongthink, even criminalize it.

It’s a long piece, with all sorts of attempts by Democrats to make it easier to vote, some of which aren’t bad, such as

And in Oregon, the first state in recent years to institute a host of methods to expand voting access, including universal vote-by-mail, Tina Kotek, the governor-elect, said she would aim to enact limits on campaign contributions from people and corporations. Nike founder Phil Knight spent millions in an effort to defeat her.

I’m all for enacting monetary limits. I’d like to see donations from outside of the state blocked to virtually nothing. Why should other states have a say? And then there’s bad

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said at the recent governors’ gathering that she was considering backing automatic registration and making it easier for out-of-state students attending Michigan universities to register to vote. (Republicans in some states have sought to make it harder for out-of-state college students, who tend to lean Democratic, to vote, arguing that they should cast ballots in their home states.) (snip)

In Pennsylvania, Shapiro has rare powers to appoint the top election official, in contrast to most other states, where elections are run by other elected officials or appointed boards.

He pledged to pick someone “pro-democracy” and said he was optimistic that Republicans would agree to change the state’s law that forbids the processing of absentee ballots and early votes before Election Day.

Students should vote in the state where their license says they live. That used to be common sense. The Pa. law forbids vote by mail expect in very specific cases, even though Dem leaning judges have allowed it. Of course Democrats want to legalize it and expand it. It makes cheating easier, just like voter ID makes cheating harder.

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Posted in Democrats, Dems in Charge: Now What? | 49 Comments | Trackback URL

We Must Rethink Capitalism To Solve Climate Apocalypse

By William Teach December 26, 2022 – 3:00 pm

Most Warmists try and keep this on the down-low, as they do not want to let the average citizen know that one of the goals of the climate cult is for government to fully control the economy. It’s all part of the Modern Socialist agenda. Yet, the peasants never wonder “hey, is this going to mess up my own life?”

Letters to the Editor: Our wealth and consumption are killing the planet. We must rethink capitalism

To the editor: Times reporter Sammy Roth raises an important issue with respect to the role of capitalism in exacerbating the climate crisis.

Changing capitalism will require more time than our climate can afford, thus the profit motive will have to be, for the present, a driving force in any climate solution. However, in the long run our economic systems will have to change.

Having huge mansions and private jets as a measure of status is contradictory to having a sustainable future. The profit motive and economic expansion cannot continue to be the primary drivers of our society if we want to have lasting solutions to maintaining a livable Earth.

Pro-tip, bub: the rich folks will still have all their mansions and jets and yachts and such if you manage to create a government run economy (of course, the letter writer fails to say how he wants to change capitalism). You’ll be left with scraps. The government will tell you what you can buy and when you can buy it, and what line to wait in to buy it. If it doesn’t run out. See Venezuela and Soviet era Russia, among others. Think you’ll be allowed to stream all those videos and movies, travel around to take your selfies and upload them? Think your small business will be open? Only if you allow government to run it.

To the editor: The free market has run amok with greed.

While the full price of a product is being paid, the seller is not telling the buyer what the full price is.

You are not told by the seller of plastic bags that they will eventually choke off all life in the sea. The oil companies are not telling you that you may die of lung disease if you use their product. Elon Musk is not telling you that the lithium he sells in his electric vehicle batteries causes destruction of the environment.

And economists are not telling you that our economy is based on an ever growing population and how that growth is not possible on a finite planet.

So, it’s Elon’s fault? What about the US states that are mandating EVs? That Brandon is trying to push these? That governments are mandating EVs?

To the editor: Roth’s piece illustrates that environmentalism is cut from the same cloth as socialism and communism.

Environmentalism, socialism and communism are all strains of the same virus. The common denominators include hostility to private property, massive propaganda, coercion instead of freedom, austerity instead of prosperity, and vast shortages of the essentials and desirables of life.

Environmentalism is dominated by an elitist class that accuses the struggling productive class of living too well, and wants to cheat the productive class out of having nice things.

Spot on.

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Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 18 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach December 26, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is horrible heat snow caused by ‘climate change’ amplification, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Bookworm Room, with a post on the importance of the Battle of Trenton, December 26, 1776.

It’s snow week! And, good grief, it’s still snowing in the Buffalo and Watertown, NY, areas.

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Unexpected: Nationwide Marijuana Glut Dropping Prices, Harming Businesses

By William Teach December 26, 2022 – 10:30 am

Who could have possibly seen this coming?

A national weed glut is causing prices to plummet and imperiling businesses

unintended consequencesMichigan has way too much weed.

The number of cannabis grow operations serving the state’s recreational market has almost doubled in the past year. The number of active marijuana plants now exceeds 1.2 million, roughly six times the volume seen in 2020.

By one estimate, Michigan has enough cultivation capacity to supply three times as much weed as the state’s consumers are buying — and that doesn’t include the huge illegal market that by all accounts commands a large share of sales.

Michigan is emblematic of what’s been happening across the country all year — and why the industry’s been in a funk even as legalization spreads: Ill-fated hopes that a Democratic-controlled Washington might loosen decades-old restrictions on the drug have given way to a market glut and plummeting prices that have put scores of businesses at risk of collapse.

In Colorado, prices have dropped by 51 percent over the last two years, according to BDSA, a cannabis analytics firm. The price of a pound of weed has plunged by 36 percent in Massachusetts and 46 percent in Missouri in just the last year, according to LeafLink, which tracks wholesale transactions.

The price drop is even more extreme in Michigan. Over the last two years, the price of weed in the recreational market has plummeted about 75 percent — from nearly $400 an ounce to less than $100.

Wait, how much? Now, I haven’t bought any in decades, but, even accounting for inflation, $400 an ounce sounds rather extreme. I could be wrong, like I said, it’s been a while. Anyhow, what did they think would happen when they just license a ton of people to grow, and there’s a whole bunch of “illegal” growers who skip the whole government regulated system and then sell it? Seriously, how many people did the government expect would be smoking it, having brownies, gummies, or whatever way? Again, I’m not against legalization. I’m not planning on having any, I don’t enjoy it anymore. But, they’re learning that the market does what the market does.

The slump is messy enough in Michigan that some industry officials are calling for a moratorium on cultivation licenses three years after the state launched a recreational market.

“With the glut of supply, and with so many licenses, it’s setting up businesses for failure,” said Beau Whitney, an economist who focuses on the cannabis industry, speaking of the Michigan market. “Nationally, very few people are making a profit in this industry.”

Those growing illegally are. It just goes to show that no one really thought about what would happen once it was made legal.

Companies face sky-high taxes because they’re treated like illegal narcotics traffickers. And the failure of a bipartisan effort in Congress this month to make it easier for marijuana businesses to access basic banking services means they’ll continue to face exorbitant rates to raise cash to run their operations. As Republicans retake the House, that dynamic is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Oops.

But by all accounts, the state (Michigan) has also struggled to crack down on the still-vibrant illicit market. Just 30 percent of cannabis sales came through licensed retail establishments — whether medical or recreational — in 2020, according to a study by Anderson Economic Group that was commissioned by the Michigan Cannabis Manufacturers Association. The rest of the transactions were either conducted through illicit channels or the state’s “caregiver” market that developed to serve medical patients prior to recreational legalization.

Heck, if it’s legal, why not grow your own for personal use? A little greenhouse would do the trick. And then you need to pay high taxes. Michigan’s system is vastly over-regulated, hence, illegal growers, and illegal importation from other states, will proliferate. Why pay $400 when you can get for a whole lot less? Law of supply and demand mixed with too much government.

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There’s A Paradox Between Climate Apocalypse And Massive Snowstorms

By William Teach December 26, 2022 – 7:15 am

They’ll never let this go

Paradox between warming climate and intense snowstorms, say scientists

There is a complex, counterintuitive relationship between rising global temperatures and the likelihood of increasingly intense snowstorms across Canada.

Winters are becoming on average milder and warmer than they used to be, but there has also been a noted rise across the country in extreme weather events, such as intense snowstorms, said John Clague, a professor of geosciences at Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, B.C.

People might think it illogical that parts of the country are seeing more snowstorms as the climate warms, he said. “What climate modelers are finding is that climate change involves more frequent extremes.”

“That means during summer, you can have extreme high temperatures, kind of life-threatening high temperatures, such as they’ve experienced in India and Pakistan in recent years. And you also can have, during winter, these extreme cold conditions.”

Yeah, yeah, polar vortex, blah blah blah. Does this mean that winters aren’t as snowy during cold periods? No matter what, the Cult of Climastrology will blame it on mankind’s release of greenhouse gases.

Feltmate said the symphony of winter storms from Vancouver to Toronto and the Maritimes can be attributed to climate change. He used a baseball analogy to illustrate the link between climate change and recent severe weather events — the heat dome, atmospheric rivers, post-tropical storm Fiona, and “mammoth” snowstorms.

“It’s a little bit like saying you have a baseball player who’s gone on steroids. And all of a sudden that baseball player starts to hit five times as many home runs,” Feltmate said.

“You can’t say that any single home run is due to the steroids. But if he or she is hitting five times as many home runs, then you can pretty much say cause and effect is going on between taking the steroids and hitting home runs. With climate change, we have extreme weather on steroids — and the steroids are here to stay.”

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Hot Take: The Electoral College Is A Threat To Democracy

By William Teach December 26, 2022 – 7:00 am

In Liberal World, everything that thwarts Democrats is A Threat To Democracy. Anything other than one party rule and dominant government is a threat to democracy

The Electoral College is hazardous to democracy, Raskin says

Rep. Jamie Raskin said Sunday the Electoral College “has become a danger” to American democracy.

Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” the Maryland Democrat said: “I think that the Electoral College now, which has given us five popular vote losers as president in our history — twice in this century alone — has become a danger.”

Raskin said it is about time that Americans elect presidents the same way they elect other public officials, through the popular vote.

“It was a danger on January 6th,” said Raskin, who served on the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, “There are so many curving by-ways and nooks and crannies in the Electoral College that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief.”

Good grief. Will Dems be whining about J6 decades from now, like the do Bush winning, or, as they say, stealing, the 2000 election?

The Electoral College was created by the Founding Fathers in the U.S. Constitution; the Electoral Count Act of 1887 has guided practical aspects of how it functions for well over a century. Proponents of the existing system argue that it gives individual states an important role in national elections.

Yes, the Framers did include it, so, apparently they are A Threat To Democracy, right? Except, as anyone who’s not a lunatic Democrat knows, we are not a democracy. The system was designed to stop large states from running roughshod over small states. They all have a say. But, Democrats think it’s unfair that they can lose per the rules of the game.

Raskin said the Electoral College is one aspect of the American system that has little appeal internationally.

“We spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year exporting American democracy to other countries,” he said to host Margaret Brennan, “and the one thing they never come back to us with is the idea that, oh, that Electoral College thing you have that’s so great. We think we’ll adopt that, too.”

Name one country of our size that was set up as our Constitution did, with 13 states…that’s another word for nation, because each of the former colonies had their own needs and wants and governance, and were supposed to run on their own, with the federal government only given certain duties, like raising a military and controlling the monetary system….joining together. It was a beautiful system established, and would work better if the 17th Amendment was repealed, which would have Senators represent the wishes of the state general assemblies, rather than special interests on the other side of the country.

The system is set up to make it very, very hard to do anything big, and getting rid of the electoral college would require a Constitutional convention. It won’t happen. And Democrats will keep whining.

Read: Hot Take: The Electoral College Is A Threat To Democracy »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Constitution, Democrats | 22 Comments | Trackback URL

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup – Christmas Edition

By William Teach December 25, 2022 – 10:00 am

Happy Sunday! Another gorgeous day in the Once And Future Nation Of America. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and it is Christmas. This pinup is by Ted Withers, with a wee bit of help.

What’s Happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? Not really sure today. It’s Christmas, so, perhaps I’ll do a full linking post later, if time permits. Otherwise, Merry Christmas to all!

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Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus

By William Teach December 25, 2022 – 8:12 am

Every Christmas, once everyone is up, Christmas greetings were made, hugs were exchanged, the presents were opened, and breakfast was being made, I would read this first in the paper (ye olde parental units get an actual paper, and they live in NJ). It is a Christmas classic that has always touched my soul. While some people outside of the Tri-State area have heard of it, rarely do papers outside of the NY-NJ-Conn area see it in print, and I always direct them to read it online. Especially since we keep getting news pieces as to whether or not we should be telling kids the truth about Santa (we shouldn’t. Let them be kids). I humbly bring it to you, and hope it touches you as much as it touches me:

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, If you see it in The Sun, it’s so. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

And a Merry Christmas from deep down in my heart to all my friends and visitors out there.

If you would like to know the background on the letter, you can go to the 2004 posting of this.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

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That’s What Christmas Is All About, Charlie Brown

By William Teach December 24, 2022 – 6:12 pm

Hilariously, Youtube took down the version I uploaded in 2006, with 4.8 million views. I’m surprised the above has lasted 7 years

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