A Shutdown Fight Could Be Good For Trump And Really, Really Bad For Democrats

By William Teach February 12, 2025 – 7:00 am

Seriously, do Democrats think supporting the irresponsible, over-spending, secretive, wasteful, and fraud loving bureaucracy is the hill to die on?

The Shutdown Fight That Could Play Right Into Trump’s Hands

With President Donald Trump and Elon Musk taking a sledgehammer to the federal bureaucracy with their “Department of Government Efficiency,” Democrats are desperate to push back — and some are eyeing what they see as an irresistible piece of leverage.

Asked on “Meet the Press” Sunday if he was “prepared to shut down the government” when funding expires on March 14, Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said he was: “They are simply trying to dismantle the government,” he said. “I cannot support efforts that will continue this lawlessness that we’re seeing.” (snip)

But having covered more than a few of these shutdown fights, I can say confidently that this isn’t the leverage point Democrats and much of Washington seem to think it is. Not only is this a battle Democrats probably can’t win, it’s one that could play right into Trump and Musk’s hands.

To understand why, let’s unpack the practical and political ramifications of a DOGE-focused shutdown over Musk’s efforts.

Rachel Bade goes through a few reasons, like if this shutdown would look like the others (it’d be better for Trump) and how the 2018 shutdown only briefly hurt Trump’s poll numbers.

For one, Democrats would be embracing a tactic they’ve long shunned: holding the government hostage until they get what they want. The party has never been comfortable with that, and there’s little reason to think Democratic leaders would feel confident about doing so now.

Huh what? Democrats have pretty much been the ones holding the government hostage almost every time.

There’s also the challenging message of explaining to Americans that you’re shutting the government down in order to save the government. The argument might make sense here in Washington, but it’s pretty damn confusing for every other American. And Democrats know that, in a shutdown, the winning message wins the fight.

Ms. Bade almost makes it to the reality: Democrats are willing to shut down government to save the waste, the fraud, the theft, the over-spending, the irresponsible actions, the defiance of their supervisors and the president, the unwillingness to be responsive to the duly elected Legislative Branch and the American People, and a bloated bureaucracy. If they want to die on this hill, well, what will be the name of the political party that replaces the Democratic Party?

Democrats Stand Up for the Bureaucrats

You couldn’t invent a scene that better explains our current politics than the one last week outside the Treasury in Washington. Some genius in the Democratic Party evidently thought it a good idea to put some of the party’s most prominent faces, most notably Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in front of the cameras to protest Elon Musk’s efforts to get inside the books of the federal government in his presidentially mandated campaign to root out inefficiency.

Picture it: The Democrats, onetime tribunes of the people, fiercely defending government employees from the taxpayers; the party of the oppressed putting it all on the line to protect federal bureaucrats from the people they’re supposed to serve.

It was a tableau for the ages, one example of the many strange battle lines the Democratic Party has chosen to defend these past few years: illegal migrants over citizens, teachers unions over parents and children, criminals over victims, men-turned-women over girls. Good luck with that, Democrats. You might want to fire your pollsters.

It’s a much longer piece at the WSJ, which I’m reading via Webpage Archive. You get the idea. Democrats wouldn’t fire their pollsters: it’s who they are and what they believe.

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Huh: US Had Coldest January In Decades

By William Teach February 11, 2025 – 3:48 pm

Of course, suddenly temperatures in the US are meaningless, though

Climate and environment updates: US had the coldest January in decades

stop global warmingIf you spent any time outside last month, you know it was frigid. Now we know that it was, in fact, the coldest January for the United States since 1988, according to a new report from NOAA.

But our deep freeze at home wasn’t enough to stop the planet from hitting another warming record. According to data analyzed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), last month ranked as the warmest January globally. It’s a reminder that the U.S. accounts for just a fraction of the planet’s overall climate conditions.

In January, the average temperature of the contiguous U.S. was 29.2 degrees Fahrenheit, 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit below average. Below-average temperatures were observed across portions of the central and southern Rockies and much of the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.

See, when it is some US state hitting a record, or the US overall hitting some high point, it is doom. When it is cold it doesn’t mean anything

Alaska experienced its wettest January on record, breaking the previous record from 1949. Across the state, most of the precipitation fell as rain instead of snow as warmer-than-average temperatures dominated throughout the month. The Alaska statewide January temperature was 13.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average, ranking eighth-warmest in the 101 years of record for the state.

While we cannot directly attribute this to human-amplified climate change, in a warming world, more precipitation will fall as rain instead of snow, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment.

See? Suddenly what happens in Alaska is important. This is all the signs of a cult.

Meanwhile, how many people, including those in Congress pushing the climate scam, not too mention the NFL itself, took fossil fueled trips to New Orleans?

Read: Huh: US Had Coldest January In Decades »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach February 11, 2025 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible fossil fueled yard machine, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Green Jihad, with a post on a purge of environmental justice radicals in the government.

Read: If All You See… »

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FEMA Ends Migrant Housing Funding In SCNY

By William Teach February 11, 2025 – 10:30 am

It’s long past time for the federal government to start spending taxpayer money on Americans, not illegals/fake asylum seekers

And then we have

FEMA halts migrant housing funds in NY after Musk’s criticism

The acting head of the federal agency responsible for responding to disasters said Monday that he’s suspending payments sent to New York City to house migrants and that staff who made them will be held accountable, after Elon Musk blasted the transactions on his social media platform.

Musk, who as head of the Department of Government Efficiency has consolidated control over much of the federal government and is working to cut costs and shrink the workforce, posted on X that his team “just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.” He said the money is intended for disaster relief and would be clawed back.

Cameron Hamilton, acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reposted Musk’s comments and said the payments were suspended as of Sunday.

Musk gave no evidence to support his claim, and information from the city of New York indicated that money it’s received to care for migrants was appropriated by Congress and allocated to the city last year by FEMA.

No one is surprised that ABC News went there, right? They weren’t too interested in proof when it came to Russia interference. If they were a news organization they would ask for the proof. But, they want to protect the illegals, not American citizens. They even manage to work in a mention of Project 2025 near the end. Moonbats.

Read: FEMA Ends Migrant Housing Funding In SCNY »

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Colorado Supreme To Consider Whether Lawfare Suit Against Fossil Fuels Companies Can Proceed

By William Teach February 11, 2025 – 7:00 am

Sadly, I do not think any of the lawyers for the fossil fuels companies will ask the plaintiffs “have you yourselves given up your own use of fossil fuels?” Nor will the judges ask the plaintiffs the same

Colorado Supreme Court to decide whether Boulder’s landmark climate-change lawsuit against Suncor, Exxon can proceed

A 4-year-old lawsuit blaming Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil for climate-change harms to Boulder County will go before the Colorado Supreme Court this week as the two oil and gas companies try to convince the justices that the state has no jurisdiction over the issue.

The companies’ attorneys will argue that greenhouse gas emissions released by oil and gas production from within the United States and countries around the world do not fall to individual states to regulate. Instead, they contend, it’s up to the federal government, through the Clean Air Act, to decide how to regulate emissions from oil and gas operators.

Meanwhile, lawyers representing the city of Boulder and Boulder County — the plaintiffs in the lawsuit — will argue that Colorado law allow local governments to pursue claims against Suncor and ExxonMobil because the municipalities are not trying to regulate emissions but, rather, want to receive compensation for the damage caused by the companies’ pollution.

What will the Court decide? Will they take the same route as the New Jersey shakedown suit? In other words, dead, because states cannot seek damages for nationwide and international emissions, as their claims cannot be governed by NJ state laws

Daniela Colaiacovo, a spokeswoman for EarthRights International, which is representing Boulder County, said attorneys were not available to talk about the case prior to Tuesday’s arguments before the state Supreme Court.

But Sean Powers, an EarthRights senior attorney, addressed the matter a statement after a Boulder District Court judge refused in June to dismiss the case.

“Since the beginning, defendants have been arguing against a case we did not plead,” Powers said. “Plaintiffs are not trying to litigate a solution to the climate crisis, they are seeking redress for harms they have suffered and will continue to suffer. The only conduct at issue is defendants’ own: what they knew, when they knew it and what they did with that knowledge.”

In other words, a shakedown.

Read: Colorado Supreme To Consider Whether Lawfare Suit Against Fossil Fuels Companies Can Proceed »

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Lawsuit Says Trump Cannot Fire People In The Executive Branch Or Something

By William Teach February 11, 2025 – 6:45 am

It’s like Democrats think that the Chief Executive cannot fire people who work in the Executive Branch, that they’re all protected

Trump’s power to fire executive branch officials will be tested in another lawsuit

A federal ethics enforcer swept up in a spree of firings President Donald Trump carried out Friday night is suing to get his job back.

The lawsuit from Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger is the latest case that will test the president’s power to fire officials across the executive branch despite federal laws that seek to protect those officials from politically motivated firings.

Dellinger was appointed by President Joe Biden to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which has no connection to the similarly titled special counsel offices that handle politically sensitive criminal cases at the Justice Department. The office enforces federal whistleblower laws and the Hatch Act — the main statute limiting political activity by federal employees. The office also fields complaints from veterans about discrimination upon their return from military service.

Dellinger sued Monday in federal court in Washington after being sacked Friday in an email sent by Sergio Gor, director of the Presidential Personnel Office in the White House.

So, they can be appointed by presidents, but, not fired by presidents? Or just when it is a Republican president? Because Biden sure fired a lot of Trump appointees.

McMahon said Dellinger’s office was like others where the courts have upheld the president’s authority to remove political appointees even when Congress tried to impose so-called “for-cause” removal protections.

But the judge also sounded skeptical of that argument, saying the special counsel post isn’t really a policymaking position.

“They don’t have a big bureaucracy underneath them. … It’s much more of a hands-on operation,” Jackson said, calling the office “a tiny little agency with a very narrow, little function, which is to protect people of either party from reprisal for whistleblowers against someone in either party.”

Any appointed position serves at the pleasure of the president. Most resign and go do something else when there is a party switch, but, Democrats no longer want to go, they want to jam up the system. But, supposedly

Various laws govern how the president can remove political appointees. Many can be dismissed by the president at will. But some appointees — particularly the members of so-called independent agencies, including the Office of Special Counsel — have statutory protections that limit the reasons they can be fired.

“The Special Counsel may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” Congress wrote in the 1978 law creating the post.

OK, how about how many of the whistleblowers during the Biden administration were treated poorly? That would have been Dellinger’s job to take care of them.

Legal challenges to Trump’s firings could send the issue back to the Supreme Court. In addition to Dellinger’s lawsuit, a Biden appointee to the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox, sued last week after being dismissed by Trump last month. The statute governing Wilcox’s position allows removal “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause.”

The White House said in its letter dismissing Wilcox that that language “does not operate as a restriction on [the president’s] ability to remove Board members” — a sign that Trump will argue in court that the Constitution gives him broad and perhaps unlimited power to dismiss executive branch employees and that efforts by Congress to impose so-called for-cause restrictions on that authority are unconstitutional.

So, Trump and future Republicans must deal with hardcore leftists in positions of power? What sense does that make?

Read: Lawsuit Says Trump Cannot Fire People In The Executive Branch Or Something »

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Tears: Commerce Tells NOAA To Search For Climate (scam) Related Grants

By William Teach February 10, 2025 – 3:36 pm

The problem with all the grants are that they are not meant for science, but, for climate cult activism, to push an agenda

NOAA told to search grant programs for climate-related terms

The Commerce Department has sent NOAA officials a broad set of keywords to search grants in ways that would cover most climate change-related projects.

Why it matters: NOAA is one of the world’s top weather and climate agencies and provides funding to universities and researchers to improve the understanding and prediction of extreme weather and climate change.

Any potential challenges to NOAA’s peer-reviewed grants are “myopic and misguided,” said Rick Spinrad, who led NOAA during the Biden administration.

If the employees do not like it, they can go work in the private sector, right? Where they will mostly have to justify their funding with results.

Zoom in: The list of keywords, a copy of which was seen by Axios, includes DEI-related language and terms pertaining to a range of Trump’s executive orders to date.

Commerce’s interpretation of Trump’s orders on environmental agreements and energy covers the terms “climate,” “methane,” “nitrous oxide,” “greenhouse gas,” “climate science,” “carbon,” the “Paris Agreement,” and other terminology.

They should also take away all use of fossil fuels for travel by all NOAA employees not doing something like flying hurricane hunter planes. No meat allowed in NOAA buildings. For starters.

The intrigue: The potential effects of the keyword searches are illustrated by an example of funding directed to NOAA for grants under the Biden climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act.

That law funded a $575 million program of climate resilience grants, according to Spinrad.

They keep telling us the science is settled, but, keep wanting more money for their research. Which never really comes to fruition, because if they solve a problem they cannot do more research and have more taxpayer money to use for shady purposes. Can’t live high on the hog without that money, eh?

Read: Tears: Commerce Tells NOAA To Search For Climate (scam) Related Grants »

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If All You See…

By William Teach February 10, 2025 – 2:14 pm

…is a field of food that will soon not grow due to ‘climate change’, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Don Surber, with a post on what Trump did this weekend.

Read: If All You See… »

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CNN: High Egg Prices Are Not Trump Nor Biden’s Fault

By William Teach February 10, 2025 – 10:30 am

And there you go, one of the uber-liberal news outlets have made their proclamation

High egg prices weren’t Biden’s fault. They’re not Trump’s either, but they’re his problem now

The soaring price of eggs has alarmed consumers and the agriculture industry, and practically everyone in Washington is pointing fingers in various directions to direct blame.

It’s hard to lay America’s egg crisis at the feet of any one politician. But agricultural experts say politicians in Washington and around the country can do more to help curtail the highly pathogenic avian influenza, or avian flu, responsible for the deaths of more than 40 million egg-laying birds last year.

Because of short supply, egg prices rose 14% from November to December alone, and they are projected to rise another 20% this year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Grocery stores across the country are limiting egg purchases, Waffle House announced a 50-cent surcharge per egg, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced the shutdown of all live poultry markets in the state through February 14 to try to contain the spread.

The initial spike in egg prices after COVID could partially be blamed on over-spending by Biden and Congress, as well as lockdowns by mostly Democrat governors, not to mention runs on eggs. And the spike in gas prices did not help. Unlike a lot of products, the inflationary pricing on eggs was an illusion. Killing all those chickens, though, was huge in the cost of the eggs. Was that all necessary? Some will say, yes, some will say it was Biden trying to harm Trump’s time in office. Avian flu is real. I lean towards the “yes, it was necessary in order to attempt to save the rest of the flock.”

Instead, many politicians have used rising egg prices to turn the opposing party into a punching bag. For example, some Democrats in Congress were quick to criticize President Donald Trump’s chaotic agenda by noting that his actions to dismantle various aspects of the federal government will do nothing to lower the price of eggs. Trump also campaigned on the promise to lower grocery prices for Americans. “When I win, I will immediately bring down prices, starting day one,” he said on the campaign trail.

Last week, pushing back, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said egg prices have continued to surge because “the Biden administration and the Department of Agriculture directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”

I mean, they did. She wasn’t necessarily saying that Biden needs to be Blamed, just that it happened. Things happen. Biden had no control over that. It does go to show that politics are way too national, and that the Credentialed Media are happy to attempt to protect Democrats and Blame Republicans.

That’s not exactly correct. Yes, the highly contagious virus is to blame for the deaths of 130 million birds during the Biden administration since 2022, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. But that is because the USDA requires the culling of entire flocks to stop the spread if the virus is detected. It happened during the Biden administration and is happening right now under the Trump administration. One hundred thousand ducks were culled between January 20 and January 23 at Crescent Duck Farm in Aquebogue, New York, after the virus was detected there.

“There is nothing Biden could have done to stop the bird flu. There is nothing President Trump could have done to stop the bird flu – it’s neither of their faults,” said egg producer Frank Hilliker, who owns Hilliker Farms in Lakeside, California.

Ducks? Hadn’t heard that. Anyhow, CNN is correct, there are times you have to back off of the blamestorming. Maybe they should tell their Comrades in the media.

Read: CNN: High Egg Prices Are Not Trump Nor Biden’s Fault »

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Bummer: Most Countries To Miss Their Climate (scam) Targets

By William Teach February 10, 2025 – 7:15 am

Of course, this is nothing new, since most countries have been missing their targets for decades, all while patting themselves on their backs for Doing Something while taking money and freedom from their peasants

‘Backsliding’: most countries to miss vital climate deadline as Cop30 nears

The vast majority of governments are likely to miss a looming deadline to file vital plans that will determine whether or not the world has a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.

Despite the urgency of the crisis, the UN is relatively relaxed at the prospect of the missed date. Officials are urging countries instead to take time to work harder on their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and divest from fossil fuels.

Simon Stiell, the UN’s top climate official, said in a speech in Brazil on Thursday: “Because these national plans are among the most important policy documents governments will produce this century, their quality should be the paramount consideration … Taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense, properly outlining how they will contribute to this effort [to tackle the climate crisis] and therefore what rewards they will reap.”

We’re supposed to listen to a small group of Elites in government and business, who are part of a doomsday cult, but, all they see are methods to control people and take money from them.

This has thrown important trading relationships, including that with China, into disarray. The disruption to geopolitics, already in turmoil after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza, has alarmed climate diplomats. Many privately believe putting off the publication of national plans, at least until Trump’s initial flurry of activity has died down, is preferable.

In other words, they’re worried that the scam money will be problematic.

Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, every five years countries must submit detailed plans – called nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – with clear targets on cutting emissions, or curbing them in the case of poorer countries. These are then discussed at a “conference of the parties” (Cop).

Last time, the deadline was in effect extended by a year: the Cop26 conference in Glasgow was postponed from November 2020 to 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This time, the deadline is technically 10 February – nine months before the Cop30 summit in Brazil this November – but with only a handful of countries so far having submitted plans, it looks likely that most will miss it.

It’s easy to make them up, but, not so easy when those stupid voters keep telling you to stop.

Read: Bummer: Most Countries To Miss Their Climate (scam) Targets »

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