Surprise: Drug Overdose Deaths Way Higher In Seattle Than COVID Deaths

By William Teach January 29, 2023 – 7:00 am

Remember this?

Washington’s 2-year experiment under new drug possession law

The legislative “fix” to Washington state’s drug possession laws takes effect once Governor Jay Inslee signs it. That new law makes simple drug possession a misdemeanor, and funds development of a statewide framework for treatment and recovery.

and

No charges for personal drug possession: Seattle’s bold gamble to bring ‘peace’ after the war on drugs

…

Late last year, prosecutors in King County, which encompasses Seattle, and neighboring Snohomish County became the first in the nation to stop charging people for possessing small amounts of drugs — heroin, meth and crack included — in virtually all cases.

Seattle also decriminalized all psychadelics, and, being a sanctuary city, they refuse to go after illegal aliens and all the drug running they do. Plus, the whole defund the police movement has caused police officers to take a more hands off approach. So, here’s what you end with

In Seattle, the ‘shadow epidemic’ has passed COVID

COVID-19 isn’t done with Seattle and King County. But after a three-year run, it’s not the top emerging health scourge anymore. The coronavirus has been officially displaced.

Drug overdoses are now killing more people than COVID.

It started to happen last summer, in August, when more than 25 people died from drugs in a week, mostly from ingesting fentanyl, county records show. In the fall, drugs firmly dethroned COVID, when 339 people died during the quarter — nearly four per day, 70% more than were dying from COVID.

As of Friday, 100 people have already died in 2023 from drug overdoses countywide. Forty-three have died of COVID.

Drugs now are overwhelming the system, in some of the same ways that we all worked to prevent by wearing masks and socially distancing during coronavirus waves.

“A key indication of just how bad things are at the end of 2022 and likely to get worse [in] 2023, the medical examiner’s office is now struggling with the issue of storing bodies because the fentanyl-related death toll continues to climb,” Public Health Director Dr. Faisal Khan, a medical epidemiologist, said at a health board meeting this month.

Great job, hyper-leftist city of Seattle. Not too mention Democrats like Joe Biden, who has left the border wide open for serious drugs, including fentanyl, to stream in. Will this be coming to other Democratic Party run cities across the nation?

Read: Surprise: Drug Overdose Deaths Way Higher In Seattle Than COVID Deaths »

Posted in Democrats, Dems in Charge: Now What? | 17 Comments | Trackback URL

Warmists Super Upset Over Whiteness Of Vermont Climate Council

By William Teach January 28, 2023 – 3:00 pm

Why are they so upset? The majority of the climate (cult) movement is made up of bored, white, 1st World Elites (and peasants who think they are elites). Like this one

Uber-rich white 1st World woman who took a fossil fueled trip from her huge McMansion to California to appear on the Kelly Clarkson Show

Frustrations over racial equity simmer on the Vermont Climate Council

On Jan. 9, the Vermont Climate Council convened via Zoom for its first meeting of the new year. On the agenda: discuss the group’s annual report, due to the Legislature every year on Jan. 15.

But before even an hour had elapsed, the discussion had spiraled into a series of tense exchanges and accusations that white council members have ignored and tokenized BIPOC — Black, Indigenous and people of color — members, underscoring simmering frustrations over the council’s inclusion and direction.

Judy Dow, an Indigenous educator and nonprofit director, told members at the meeting that her inclusion on a council subcommittee “feels totally like I was only there as a token.”

“You can’t only say you hear us,” Dow said. “You have to listen to our voices. This is getting out of hand with this committee.”

The Vermont Climate Council was born from Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act, which lawmakers passed in 2020. That law requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by set amounts at certain benchmarks over the next 30 years, with an ultimate goal of being 80% below the state’s 1990 emissions levels by 2050.

The council, a 23-person body made up of state officials and representatives from nonprofits, municipalities and other stakeholder groups, was assigned the unenviable task of figuring out how best to do that.

What did they expect? The state is 94% white, 1.5% black, and just .4% Native American. And most “BIPOC” have real things to worry about, not this scam.

Read: Warmists Super Upset Over Whiteness Of Vermont Climate Council »

Posted in Climate Cult, Global Warming | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 28, 2023 – 1:00 pm

…is an inland sea from climate doom, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The First Street Journal, with a post on Philly’s mother of the year.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Democrats Send Strongly Worded Letter To Biden Over “Restrictive” Asylum Policies

By William Teach January 28, 2023 – 10:30 am

Many of these Democrats complained about border states and Colorado sending illegal aliens/asylum seekers to deep blue sanctuary cities

77 Democrats send a letter to Biden criticizing his border and immigration policies

A group of 77 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday criticizing his administration’s policies restricting asylum access for migrants crossing the southern border.

The letter, signed by New Jersey Sens. Bob Menendez and Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 74 others, said the new policies announced Jan. 5 to open more legal options for migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba while also eliminating pathways for those nationalities to claim asylum at the border are “disappointing.”

While 30,000 migrants from those four countries will be eligible to apply for humanitarian parole protections from their home countries, Mexico has also agreed to take back 30,000 migrants per month from those same countries as the Biden administration expands the Trump-era Covid protections known as Title 42.

At a press conference Thursday, Menendez said, “We recognize that the United States is experiencing a difficult migration challenge at the southern border. But as elected officials, we are duty-bound to propose legal solutions, one that protects asylum-seekers while also securing the safe removal of migrants who have no legal claim to stay in the United States.”

AOC called the shipping of illegals as a crime against humanity, right after the states started shipping them to NYC, and was livid at NYC Mayor Adams for having tent cities in her district. Menendez and Booker, and many others were also Outraged. See, they’re good with illegals being shipped all over the country after streaming to the border to claim asylum, just not to their own areas.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has also said the administration is preparing to propose a new federal rulemaking that would allow his department to deny the right to claim asylum at the southern border for migrants who do not first seek asylum in a country they pass through.

Well, it’s a start, but, they should be required to apply for asylum outside the U.S. and remain outside the U.S. till that process is complete.

“Instead of issuing a new asylum transit ban and expanding Title 42,” the Democratic lawmakers said in the letter to Biden, “we encourage your administration to stand by your commitment to restore and protect the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.” The letter noted that asylum is an international right that should not be restricted.

When will these Democrats take asylum seekers into their own homes during the hearing process? And continue hosting them after they blow off their hearings/are denied.

Read: Democrats Send Strongly Worded Letter To Biden Over “Restrictive” Asylum Policies »

Posted in Democrats, Illegal Immigration | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Brandon Admin Blocks Another Mine Necessary To Make EVs And Green Energy Projects

By William Teach January 28, 2023 – 7:15 am

Hey, remember when Democrats passed the wrongly named Inflation Reduction Act, with all its climate doom bits and bots, some of which yammered about manufacturing components in America? Things like batteries, requiring American mined materials in order to qualify for tax rebates? And all the solar panels and wind turbines? And how I and other Skeptics said that both Biden and enviroweenies would look to shut down any attempted mining?

Biden admin issues 20-year mining ban as it turns to foreign supply chain amid green energy push

Electric vehicleThe Biden administration on Thursday announced that it would complete a 20-year withdrawal of 225,504 acres in a northern Minnesota forest area that is home to some of the largest domestic critical mineral reserves.

The action announced by the Department of the Interior (DOI) effectively prohibits mining activity from taking place in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Duluth, Minnesota, and surrounding area for the next two decades. The agency said it took the action in an effort to protect the local environment and watershed, which environmentalists worried would be contaminated by mining activity.

“The Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans. Protecting a place like Boundary Waters is key to supporting the health of the watershed and its surrounding wildlife, upholding our Tribal trust and treaty responsibilities, and boosting the local recreation economy,” DOI Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

It is rather interesting that all these climate cultists keep admitting that the environment gets damaged in order to produce EVs, eh? It’s also a hell of a thing that the federal government can keep clamping down on things that happen on state property. Or what should be state property.

Last year, the DOI canceled two mineral leases held by the firm Twin Metals Minnesota, which had been located in the Superior National Forest located outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. As a result of that decision and the action Thursday, domestic mining companies will effectively be banned from operating in the region for the foreseeable future and the forest’s vast critical mineral resources will be left untapped.

However, Twin Metals’ mining project contained about 88% of the nation’s cobalt reserves in addition to vast copper, nickel and platinum-group elements. Such critical minerals are vital for various green energy technologies like electric vehicle batteries, battery storage facilities, solar panels and wind turbines, which the Biden administration has aggressively pushed.

It might take a Republican president to make this happen. Again, I’m not against EVs, solar panels, wind turbines, etc, I’m against citizens being forced into them along with replacing affordable, dependable “dirty” energy with unreliable, expensive “green” energy.

The State Department recently signed an agreement that opens the door to financing mining projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which mined more than 70% of the global supply of cobalt in 2021 and is home to 3.5 million metric tons of cobalt reserves. But independent investigations conducted in recent years have found that cobalt mines in the DRC employ child laborers.

The Biden admin’s cool with environmental damage (and child labor, some of it forced) in 3rd world shitholes like DRC.

“It’s difficult to square the announcement of this significant land withdrawal with the Biden administration’s stated goals on electrification, the energy transition and supply chain security,” said National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan in a statement. “At a time when demand for minerals such as copper, nickel and cobalt are skyrocketing for use in electric vehicles and solar and wind infrastructure, the administration is withdrawing hundreds of thousands of acres of land that could provide U.S. manufacturers with plentiful sources of these same minerals.”

Yeah, well, I told you this would happen. Not that it was all that difficult to predict.

Read: Brandon Admin Blocks Another Mine Necessary To Make EVs And Green Energy Projects »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming, Joe Biden | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

U.S. Intel Chief Gives Pessimistic View Of Ukraine War

By William Teach January 28, 2023 – 7:00 am

She probably got a good talking to from the White House after this

U.S. intel chief warns of ‘devastating’ impact of Russian missile attacks

Joe Biden Ice Cream AfghanistanPresident Biden’s chief intelligence adviser raised fresh concerns Thursday night that Russian missile attacks are having a “devastating” impact on the Ukrainian economy, noting that the war has already reduced the country’s gross domestic product by nearly one-third.

Wait, if the war is as damaging as we’ve been told, how is their GDP only down one-third? Why does the U.S. taxpayer need to be dumping tens of billions every couple months into Ukraine?

Speaking during a question-and-answer session at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said U.S. officials so far “do not see any reduction in the resolve of the Ukrainians to fight this war.”

But at the same time, Haines seemed to offer a more sobering view of the conflict than most Biden administration officials have shared to date. She said the “brutal” missile attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure are taking a far bigger toll than has been publicly understood.

Haines touted the administration’s declassification of intelligence last year that revealed Russia’s intentions to invade Ukraine during a period when European allies were skeptical that President Vladimir Putin would actually go through with it. And she said the U.S. has continued to provide important tactical battlefield intelligence to the Ukrainian military.

Well, with Trump in the White House Putin wasn’t making moves. Biden comes in and shows his weakness, especially with his disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, and Putin is emboldened.

But she also described the war as having devolved into a “grinding conflict” where the movements are in “hundreds of meters.” The frontlines, she noted, have mostly remained “relatively static” even while the Russians press an offensive in the eastern Donbas region in which they have made “very incremental progress.”

So, essentially, the Biden position that Ukraine is slowly winning is a load of mule fritters. It looks like Putin is trying to grind it out and not destroy everything in the country they’re looking to take over. Putin knows that the West will only back Ukraine for so long before the citizens tire of funding this.

Read: U.S. Intel Chief Gives Pessimistic View Of Ukraine War »

Posted in Current Affairs, Europe | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

The Horror: Google Let Daily Wire Advertise On “Climate Change Is A Hoax” Searches

By William Teach January 27, 2023 – 2:57 pm

Seriously, this is a thing that is getting the UK Guardian bent out of shape over? How about all those Elites taking private fossil fueled jets to climate meetings?

Google let Daily Wire advertise on ‘climate change is a hoax’ searches

Green Climate Thought PoliceA media outlet founded by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro paid Google to advertise on search pages questioning whether the climate crisis is real, according to new research from a disinformation watchdog group.

The Daily Wire bought ads on search terms over the past year such as “climate change is a hoax” and “why is climate change fake”, meaning that when people Googled these phrases, stories from Shapiro’s outlet were some of the first results that appeared, the research found.

Google sold these ads even after announcing a new policy in October 2021 prohibiting ads that promote climate crisis denial. Its CEO, Sundar Pichai, publicly stated at the time that “when people come to Google Search with questions about climate change, we’ll show authoritative information from sources like the United Nations”.

“Google’s hypocrisy knows no bounds,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the US and UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, which provided its research exclusively to the Guardian. “They’re actually selling the right to climate deniers to spread disinformation.” (snip)

For its research, Ahmed’s organization relied upon a commercial analytics tool called Semrush, which is used by many Fortune 500 companies and shows the Google phrases and search terms that brands advertise on. Semrush also provides estimates of the dollar amounts companies are spending on digital marketing efforts.

This is hilariously a long article, Outraged that Google would allow this to happen. How dare they make money off of anyone who disagrees with cult doctrine! And, seriously, a group has time and the inclination to investigate this stuff? Really? This is almost as dumb as “Influencers”.  Of course, they do want to shut down opposing voices, because the climate cult cannot prove their beliefs, hence, they do not want anyone seeing information that conflicts with that doctrine.

Want to take action on climate change? These books can help.

….

To help our readers meet these challenges, Yale Climate Connections has assembled a special collection of books and reports on climate action. Each offers practical advice for individuals who want to persuade their communities to act on climate change. Some of these titles have appeared in previous bookshelves; others are newly discovered or recently published. The collection includes titles aimed at different age groups: adults, college students, young adults, and children. Many also offer inspiring personal stories of climate activism.

So if you want to up your game on climate change this year, resolve to read one of these books.

As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by the publishers or organizations that released them.

Per the descriptions of those books at the link, none seem to say “give up your own use of fossil fuels and make your lives carbon neutral.” They all but one seem to be about agitating, demonstrating, and getting Government to crack down on your money, life, and freedom of choice. And this one

Climate Courage: How Tackling Climate Change Can Build Community, Transform the Economy, and Bridge the Political Divide in America, by Andreas Karelas (Beacon Press 2020, 248 pages, $17.00 paperback)

Transform the economy? To what? It’s $13.99 at Amazon, and, let’s see a few reviews (it only has 9 and 20 ratings, despite being out since 2020)

  • Socialist indoctrination. It’s a shame I was forced to read this for school
  • No solutions, just a bunch of empty talking points

And none of the editorial reviews by climate cult bigshots, like Bill McKibben, mention what kind of economy they book is pushing, nor what they want to do for communities.

Read: The Horror: Google Let Daily Wire Advertise On “Climate Change Is A Hoax” Searches »

Posted in Climate Cult, Global Warming | 12 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 27, 2023 – 1:00 pm

…is a dusty sky from carbon pollution Bad Weather, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Victory Girls Blog, with a post on Project Veritas stinging Pfizer.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Good News: NIH Didn’t Adequately Track Funding To Wuhan

By William Teach January 27, 2023 – 10:30 am

Well, gee wiz, didn’t government officials, like Anthony Fauci, claim that there was nothing bad going on with the NIH funding China on research, that there was no gain of research happening?

‘Extremely disconcerting’: NIH didn’t track U.S. funds going to Chinese virus research, watchdog finds

Republicans PounceThe National Institutes of Health failed to provide adequate oversight of an American organization that funded controversial research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, according to a new government report that is sure to raise new questions about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report is evidence of “major failures in past NIH oversight of high-risk research on enhanced potential pandemic pathogens,” Rutgers molecular biologist Richard Ebright told Yahoo News in an email.

Issued by the inspector general of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, the new report says nothing about the origins of the coronavirus. For the most part, it concerns research that took place well before the first cases of what came to be known as SARS-CoV-2 were discovered in China in late 2019.

But it does note that the American organization in question, the EcoHealth Alliance, should have been more rigorously scrutinized by federal officials regarding assurances that its partner lab in Wuhan was not using U.S. funds to conduct gain-of-function research, which boosts viruses to study how they might evolve in nature.

“The entire picture starts to look extremely disconcerting,” mathematical biologist Alex Washburne told Yahoo News. He said that a project on coronaviruses originating in bats, for which the EcoHealth Alliance had given a grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, “was clearly gain-of-function research.”

Good job, NIH, good job! Giving lots of U.S. taxpayer to a foreign entity in a country that is an adversary, one with a poor record on containing leaks of diseases, and failing to monitor it properly. Then lying about it to the American people. But, of course

Republicans seized on the findings, with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — a skeptic of virtually every aspect of the official coronavirus narrative — charging that the NIH “failed to conduct adequate oversight.”

China hawks will also be emboldened, accusing President Biden of not being forceful enough with the East Asian superpower.

Seizing! Anyhow, it’s fun how we are allowed to talk about this now, at the tail end of Wuhan flu, 3 years later. How the news is now saying things, questioning things, things that people were being shut down over back in 2020, 2021, being called nuts and conspiracy theorists, eh?

Meanwhile

California law aiming to curb COVID misinformation blocked by judge

A U.S. judge has blocked a California law that sought to penalize doctors who spread “misinformation or disinformation” about COVID-19 while he considers a pair lawsuits challenging it on free speech grounds.

Senior U.S. District Judge William Shubb in Sacramento ruled on Wednesday that Assembly Bill 2098, which was signed last October by California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, was too vague for doctors to know what kind of statements might put them at risk of being penalized.”COVID-19 is a quickly evolving area of science that in many aspects eludes consensus,” he wrote.

Too bad he didn’t block it due to being a massive infringement on Free Speech, both in the U.S. Constitution and the California Constitution. But, I guess he’s trying to play it safe while waiting for the lawsuits to happen

The preliminary order means that the law cannot be enforced while Shubb hears two lawsuits brought against the law shortly after its passage last year – one by a group of five doctors, and another by a doctor and two advocacy groups including Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s Children’s Health Defense, which has long promoted false information about standard childhood vaccines.

“This Act is a blatant attempt to silence doctors whose views, though based on thorough scientific research, deviate from the government-approved ‘party line,'” said Greg Dolin of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a lawyer for the doctors, in a statement. “At no point has the State of California been able to articulate the line between permissible and impermissible speech.”

This is what Gavin Newsom calls freedom, the government censoring people for Wrongthink.

Read: Good News: NIH Didn’t Adequately Track Funding To Wuhan »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Washington Representative Notes Climate Crisis (scam) Bill Will Increase Cost Of Living

By William Teach January 27, 2023 – 7:15 am

Guess who gets to pay the price for Government climate apocalypse bills? It’s not the Elites, especially those who pass the bills

(560KPQ) A local legislator is speaking out against a proposed climate change bill that would impose new requirements on cities and counties across Washington State.

Supporters of the bill say it’s a step forward to making Washington a more climate friendly state by reducing urban sprawl and greenhouse emissions.

12th District Representative Keith Goehner says the legislature continues to add more requirements making these goals extremely difficult.

“And if we got two or three objectives and concepts being put forward without clear understanding of how that’s going to impact people’s lives, we need to step back and be very judicious on how we proceed.” Goehner said. “When you look at the cost of living in this day and age, what are we doing and what are we getting for the return on that additional cost. It’s always the taxpayer/consumer that’s having to pay for that.”

This week, the bill passed through the House Local Government Committee by a four to three vote.

Yes, the peasants will have to pay for it. And have to live with it, while the Elites will continue living their big carbon footprint lives, traveling in fossil fueled vehicles, taking private jets, living in big mansions with expansive lawns, etc and so on. Can’t wait till the leftist, climate scam believing citizens of Washington realize their beliefs are hosing their lives.

Read: Washington Representative Notes Climate Crisis (scam) Bill Will Increase Cost Of Living »

Posted in Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL
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