Bidenconomy: Halloween Candy And Ice Cream Prices Spike 13%

By William Teach October 18, 2022 – 10:30 am

Well, you know, candy is bad for the planet because obesity is bad for ‘climate change’, and being overweight puts a strain on the health system, but, of course, that’s body shaming

Inflation Causes Halloween Candy Prices to Soar 13.1 Percent

Handing out Halloween treats is going to be trickier this year.

The cost of candy and chewing gum soared 13.1 percent compared with a year earlier in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the highest increase ever recorded.

The surge in candy prices is being driven by rising costs of ingredients, such as sugar and flour. Sugar is 17 percent higher than last year, and flour increased even more, to 24 percent higher. Cakes, cupcakes, and cookies are also up by 16 percent.

According to Bloomberg, a drought in the northern states affecting beet-sugar crops has contributed to the increase in production costs for sugar this year.

Supply chain woes from the pandemic and Ukraine were also noted to be contributing to a shortage of essential ingredients for chocolate, such as cocoa, which recently prompted the CEO of Hershey to announce that company is anticipating a candy shortage this year.

In fairness, it’s not all Biden’s fault. It goes back to China screwing around with coronaviruses, but, Biden has done little to help alleviate the price spikes. Nor have Democrats. Most of them just don’t care.

I’ve mentioned it sometime in the past that a carton of Blue Bell ice cream used to be $5.99 at my Walmart, and now it’s $7.99. Breyers has gone up, as has Turkey Hill.

Read: Bidenconomy: Halloween Candy And Ice Cream Prices Spike 13% »

Posted in Democrats, Economy, Joe Biden | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

Brandon Admin Warns About Higher Energy Prices This Winter

By William Teach October 18, 2022 – 7:15 am

The administration failed to mention that much of that cost is due to their own policies

US government says all Americans will pay much more for natural gas this winter

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) has released data on projected energy costs, indicating that Americans can expect to pay higher fees for natural gas for the upcoming winter.

The EIA said it forecasted that U.S. households that primarily use natural gas for heating will spend an average of $931 on heating this winter – a whopping 28%, or $206, more than last year.

Nearly half of all U.S. homes rely on natural gas as the primary heating fuel, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey.

The expected increase in natural gas bills, according to the EIA, is due to higher retail natural gas prices. The agency said it expected retail natural gas prices to rise 22%, from $13.02 per thousand cubic feet (McF) last winter, to $15.95/McF this winter.

It’s not like the Brandon admin hasn’t worked hard to cause the price of natural gas to spike or anything, right? But, see, the climate cultists want the high prices to happen

(Energy News Network) With natural gas prices climbing, clean energy advocates say regulators need to reconsider a Nixon-era practice that lets utilities pass along fuel costs to customers with little regulatory oversight.

Since the early 1970s, ratepayers have typically been the ones to pay — or benefit from — fluctuations in power plant fuel prices, which often show up on customers’ bills on a separate line called a fuel adjustment clause. It has been a good arrangement for customers for much of this century as the fracking revolution drove down natural gas prices and replaced more expensive coal.

Clean energy advocates say the passthrough nature of fuel costs means utilities have little motivation to change their generation mix in response to rising prices. As a result, critics say there’s less incentive for utilities to seek lower-cost alternatives to natural gas and coal such as wind and solar.

Except, they aren’t lower cost, they aren’t reliable, and aren’t dependable. But, if natural gas continues to spike in price, the climate cult can make solar and wind look better. Of course, it won’t work in the parts of the country that get really cold. Those people can just suffer for the beliefs of the climate cult, who tend not to live in those really cold areas.

(Real Clear Energy) But voters see and feel the downsides of Biden’s war on fossil fuels: the high costs of gasoline, electricity, and other utilities, which in turn increase the costs of food, rent, and consumer goods. Those effects, moreover, coincide with high general inflation, a cratering stock market, and negative GDP growth in two consecutive quarters. Biden tries to blame Vladimir Putin and Big Oil for America’s energy woes. That is nonsense, and the public isn’t buying it.

The Elites do not care.

Read: Brandon Admin Warns About Higher Energy Prices This Winter »

Posted in Energy, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

U.S. Getting Warnings Of Coming COVID Or Something

By William Teach October 18, 2022 – 7:00 am

They’re really trying to make this happen

US warned to get ready as Europe deals with new COVID-19 rise

Rising COVID-19 cases in Europe are setting off warnings that the U.S. could experience a new surge this winter.

Previous jumps in the U.S. have followed a pattern in which cases first rise in Europe, making officials nervous they could see a spike in U.S. cases as the weather turns.

The most recent data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows that cases began going up around the beginning of September in Europe

The seven-day average is roughly 230,000 cases per day, reflecting rates that were seen in late July when Europe was still dealing with the omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariant wave.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated last week that a rise in cases in Europe was expected due to cooling temperatures, but stressed that hospitalizations and deaths did not have to rise as well due to the viral therapeutics that are now available.

I’m sure the powers that be will start crushing us with ads and such about getting vaxed and boosted, but, really, do most people really trust that anymore? It really has become basically a flu shot, where it mostly will just keep you from getting the Wuhan flu badly?

Ali Mokdad, epidemiologist and professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, told The Hill the contrast in the regions can be attributed to multiple factors, including warmer temperatures in the U.S. and differing levels of community immunity.

“In the U.S., we have a higher infection rate than many European countries, where more people have been infected here. So we have a little bit more immunity than they do, but still we have waning immunity,” Mokdad said.

Well, Europe opened up much earlier, they made sure that more people were exposed to COVID, giving them natural immunity, rather than keeping people locked down for too long

COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations in the U.S. will likely begin going up in three to four weeks, Mokdad said, though they won’t reach the same levels seen during the omicron wave last winter. He emphasized that this projection is contingent on a situation in which new coronavirus variants that are better at escaping immunity don’t rise in dominance.

Do you think they’ll try and implement masking again? And then when masking doesn’t work, vaccine mandates?

Experts who spoke with The Hill strongly encouraged people to get the updated bivalent booster ahead of the holiday season.

“The best holiday present that you can give — whatever you celebrate — that you give for yourself and your family members is protection and safety. And the best way to do it is to go and get your booster and your flu shot,” Mokdad said.

Read: U.S. Getting Warnings Of Coming COVID Or Something »

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Say, Can Focusing On Climate Crisis (scam) Win Elections Or Something

By William Teach October 17, 2022 – 3:00 pm

No. It can’t. It damned sure didn’t help Jay Inslee in 2020, who couldn’t even get the hardcore leftists in Washington state to approve his climate apocalypse agenda, and he flamed out of the Democrat primaries early. Nor did it help Mike Bloomberg or Jay Inslee. All three made climate doom their focus

Can Focusing On Climate Change Help Win Elections?

“Our generation grew up watching as the climate crisis got worse and worse and politicians did nothing.” That might sound like a quote from teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, but it’s actually the opening line for a new series of political ads appearing in multiple states in the lead-up to the 2022 midterms — ads that the advocacy groups Climate Power Action and the League of Conservation Voters are hoping will tip the scales towards climate-focused Democrats.

Historically, however, climate change has not been much of a political kingmaker. Even when candidates trusted that their constituents did care deeply about the environment, it hasn’t been something that reliably changed votes. In the 2020 presidential election, for example, two-thirds of voters told exit pollster Edison Research that climate change was a “serious problem” — but 29 percent of that same group voted for then-President Donald Trump, a candidate whose position on climate change was … inconsistent … at best.

So a $12 million ad campaign aimed specifically at promoting Democratic candidates’ climate change bona fides seems, at first glance, like a fool’s errand. But even though the content of these ads makes it clear they’re meant for a narrow audience — young voters, who see themselves as part of a generation bearing the consequences of inaction on climate change — the ads aren’t even for all of them. Instead, the groups funding these ads are trying to reach a specific sliver of a slice of a subset of young voters. And yet there’s reason to think that, on those slender margins, climate change could be becoming an issue that really sways elections.

The thing is, even for most of those young people, climate is important as a theory, not in practice, especially when they can’t afford food, housing, clothes, energy, cars, and, most importantly, traveling places to take selfies. And, all those who will buy into the ads were already hardcore Warmists and were going to vote Democrat anyhow. The ads won’t get Independents and barely Republicans to switch over, nor will it convince the moderate Democrats who will either vote GOP or just sit it out to go vote Democrat.

But the relationship between voters and climate policy has long fallen under the label of “it’s complicated.” There is an established gap between what voters say they want — action on climate change — and what they’re willing to do to achieve that. In 2019, for example, polling by Reuters and Ipsos found that while 69 percent of Americans wanted the government to take “aggressive” action on climate change, only 42 percent were likely to install solar panels on their own home; 38 percent were likely to begin carpooling to reduce emissions; and just 34 percent were likely to pay an extra $100 a year in taxes to support climate policies. And in 13 years of YouGov polls tracking which issues registered voters see as the most important, climate change has consistently taken a back seat to economic issues like jobs and inflation. As of Oct. 10, 12 percent of voters listed climate change and the environment as their No. 1 concern, while 22 percent cited inflation and high prices. It’s not that emphasizing climate change is a turn-off for voters — President Biden got a solid B+ on Greenpeace’s 2020 election Climate Scorecard. But neither is climate an issue that seems to attract voters on its own. Having the highest score on the Greenpeace scorecard during his candidacy was not enough to catapult Washington’s Democratic governor, Jay Inslee, to the White House.

How many of that 38% actually start carpooling? How about the 42% who say they are willing to install solar panels? Did they? In real terms, no one really cares enough to act on it in their own lives.

But the main goal of the LCV’s ad campaign appears to be persuading people to vote for a candidate because that person has gotten climate policy done — something that’s presented in the ads as a bit of a surprise, a “can you believe they actually did it?” moment. Years of research have shown that the persuasion effects created by advertising — whether political or otherwise — do not last very long, and they are very small, capable of maybe creating a percentage-point difference in swing, said Lynn Vavreck, a professor of politics and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But don’t confuse small in size with not being pivotal,” she said.

They would have voted for that Democrat anyhow. It’s not convincing new votes. And, it could convince some to vote Republican, as they already see how the Inflation Reduction Act, which won’t, will create more big government involved in their lives, raising the cost of energy and food.

Read: Say, Can Focusing On Climate Crisis (scam) Win Elections Or Something »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Elections, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach October 17, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is an area that lost its grass due to carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is No Tricks Zone, with a post St. Greta making German Greens upset over her support of nuclear power.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Surprise: Republicans Have The Edge On Mid-Terms

By William Teach October 17, 2022 – 10:30 am

There are three big questions on this poll. The first is the notion that many are sandbagging when asked, and that they’re really supporting the GOP much more. The second is whether the young folks will show up. The third is the notion of how this plays out in each individual district

Republicans Gain Edge as Voters Worry About Economy, Times/Siena Poll Finds

Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with a narrow but distinctive advantage as the economy and inflation have surged as the dominant concerns, giving the party momentum to take back power from Democrats in next month’s midterm elections, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found.

The poll shows that 49 percent of likely voters said they planned to vote for a Republican to represent them in Congress on Nov. 8, compared with 45 percent who planned to vote for a Democrat. The result represents an improvement for Republicans since September, when Democrats held a one-point edge among likely voters in the last Times/Siena poll. (The October poll’s unrounded margin is closer to three points, not the four points that the rounded figures imply.)

With inflation unrelenting and the stock market steadily on the decline, the share of likely voters who said economic concerns were the most important issues facing America has leaped since July, to 44 percent from 36 percent — far higher than any other issue. And voters most concerned with the economy favored Republicans overwhelmingly, by more than a two-to-one margin.

Here’s what it looks like

Whites go for the GOP 55-40. Blacks go Dem 78-18, once again voting for the party that works to keep them down, stoke race hatred, and turn black neighborhoods into crime infested areas. Hispanics are 60-34 Democrat. That’s one of those that could actually be much more towards the GOP, especially in border states.

We know the 65 and up group will show up. They always do. Same with the 45 to 64. But, what about the 18-29’s, and the lower end of 30-44?

‘Voting is too dumb’: Roe is gone, student debt is piling up and young people are mad. But will they vote?

For years Amini Bonane suffered from abnormal menstrual cycles. Getting doctors to take her and her reproductive health seriously was hard, until she was finally diagnosed with fibroids.

So when the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade was announced in June, Bonane was furious. The decision, she feared, would add even more difficulty for women like herself — especially young Black women — to get the care they need.

“It’s really disheartening that there’s decisions being made by people who aren’t affected by these things,” said Bonane, a 27-year-old women’s rights community organizer.

It’s really disheartening that these young people have bought into Scaremongering from people lying to them about Dobbs, that they don’t take the time to learn the reality, and that they don’t understand that it’s all about what the state will do.

Democrats are betting that a summer of unprecedented news could motivate young people to show up and vote. The overturning of the 1973 Roe decision in particular could prompt young voters to turn out at historic levels — especially young women and other people who can become pregnant, like transgender men and nonbinary people. 

Huh what? That is just very, very stupid. But, Democrats have decided to teach Alternative Science.

But young voters are notorious for skipping the polls, especially during midterm elections, fueling worries among some activists and campaigns that even such a momentous news year might not be enough to get those ballots in.

In a series of pre-midterm polls by youth voter organizations, young people listed abortion, the economy and climate change among their top issues — all issues that Democrats have targeted ahead of November’s elections through campaigning and policy.

Until the 2018 midterms, youth voter turnout had not surpassed 26% since at least 1994, with just 20% of young people turning out to vote in the 2014 midterms, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).

Will they show up? More importantly, will they show up in those close elections, or just for the ones where a Democrat is going to win anyhow? It’s a very long piece, ending with

Julia Perrotta, a 21-year-old civic engagement coordinator for IGNITE, has always been motivated to vote. She said it’s barriers to voting, such as address changes in college and understanding where to get registered and vote, that prevent many of her peers from casting ballots, not a lack of interest.

“It’s really important to break the stigma that young people don’t care because they do,” Perrotta said. “Young people care so much about politics.”

So, they really care, but, aren’t smart enough to understand how to register and vote? Huh.

Read: Surprise: Republicans Have The Edge On Mid-Terms »

Posted in Elections | 8 Comments | Trackback URL

Brandon White House Looks To Modify Sunlight To Cool The Earth Or Something

By William Teach October 17, 2022 – 7:00 am

What could possibly go wrong?

Once a dystopian fantasy, manipulating sunlight to cool the earth is now on the White House research agenda

The White House is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth to temper the effects of global warming, a process sometimes called solar geoengineering or sunlight reflection.

The research plan will assess climate interventions, including spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space, and should include goals for research, what’s necessary to analyze the atmosphere, and what impact these kinds of climate interventions may have on the Earth, according to the White House‘s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Congress directed the research plan be produced in its spending plan for 2022, which President Joe Biden signed in March.

Some of the techniques, such as spraying sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, are known to have harmful effects on the environment and human health. But scientists and climate leaders who are concerned humanity will overshoot its emissions targets say research is important to figure out how to balance these risks against a possibly catastrophic rise in the earth’s temperature.

Great idea, screwing with the health of people and the environment to fight a mostly fake issue

There are significant and well-known risks to some of these techniques — sulfur dioxide aerosol injection in particular.

First, spraying sulfur into the atmosphere will “mess with the ozone chemistry in a way that might delay the recovery of the ozone layer,” Parson told CNBC. (snip)

Also, sulfates injected into the atmosphere eventually come down as acid rain, which affects soil, water reservoirs, and local ecosystems.

Thirdly, the sulfur in the atmosphere forms very fine particulates that cause respiratory illness.

Great idea, eh? And it’s only supposed to cost $10 billion a year, surely funneled into all sorts of political connected companies.

Doing research is also important because many onlookers expect that some country, facing an unprecedented climate disaster, will act unilaterally to will try some version of sunlight modification anyway — even if it hasn’t been carefully studied.

Looking forward to creating the next ice age, and all the acid rain.

Read: Brandon White House Looks To Modify Sunlight To Cool The Earth Or Something »

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

NY Times Seems Pretty Upset That Combat Veterans Would Be Running For The House As Republicans

By William Teach October 17, 2022 – 6:45 am

It’s like the Grey Lady would think that all combat veterans are snowflakes and SJWs, that they think it’s great that the military is more focused on ‘climate change’, raaaaacism, CRT, and the gender confused rather than protecting the U.S., and should run as Democrats (free read at Yahoo)

New Generation of Combat Vets, Eyeing House, Strike From the Right

In early 2019, as the Defense Department’s bureaucracy seemed to be slow-walking then-President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria, Joe Kent, a CIA paramilitary officer, called his wife, Shannon, a Navy cryptologic technician who was still in Syria working against the Islamic State group.

“‘Make sure you’re not the last person to die in a war that everyone’s already forgotten about,’” Kent said he told his wife. “And that’s exactly what happened,” he added bitterly.

The suicide bombing that killed Kent and three other service members days later set off a chain of events — including a somber encounter with Trump — that has propelled Kent from a storied combat career to single parenthood, from comparing notes with other anti-war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to making increasingly loud pronouncements that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters are political prisoners.

In five weeks, Kent, 42, a candidate for a House seat in Washington state that was long represented by a soft-spoken moderate Republican, may well be elected to Congress. And he is far from alone.

A new breed of veterans, many with remarkable biographies and undeniable stories of heroism, are running for the House on the far right of the Republican Party, challenging old assumptions that adding veterans to Congress — men and women who fought for the country and defended the Constitution — would foster bipartisanship and cooperation. At the same time, they are embracing anti-interventionist military and foreign policies that, since the end of World War II, have been associated more with the Democratic left than the mainline GOP.

In other words, they’re mirroring the true Conservative base, who do not want all the unnecessary interventionism, who are pushing for freedom, liberty, and limited government, who are tired of all the elites, including the Republican elites, ie, GOPe, and want to stand up for We The People. This makes Elites like the NY Times upset.

Beyond their right-wing leanings, all share in common a deep skepticism about U.S. interventionism, borne of years of fighting in the post-9/11 war on terrorism and the belief that their sacrifices only gave rise to more instability and repression wherever the United States put boots on the ground.

Where earlier generations of combat veterans in Congress became die-hard defenders of a global military footprint, the new cohort is unafraid to launch ad hominem attacks on the men who still lead U.S. forces.

“I worked for Milley. I worked for Austin. I worked for Mattis,” Don Bolduc, 60, a retired brigadier general challenging Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said of Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the current and former defense secretaries, Lloyd Austin and Jim Mattis. “Their concerns centered around the military-industrial complex and maintaining the military-industrial complex, so as three- and four-star generals, they can roll right into very lucrative jobs.”

It is time to stop intervening in everything, and, when we do get involved, it needs to make sense, be targeted, and go there to win. Going after Afghanistan and Iraq were the right things to do: how we did it was the problem. We weren’t there to kick ass and take names, we were there to “nation build”, which is why we were in Afghanistan for 20 years. And pretty much nothing to show for it.

It’s a long, long piece, and, reading between the lines, a hit job, painting them all as far right wackjobs who Hate Democracy. It’s all the NY Times knows.

Read: NY Times Seems Pretty Upset That Combat Veterans Would Be Running For The House As Republicans »

Posted in GOP, Politics, Wonky Media | 15 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach October 16, 2022 – 1:19 pm

…are Evil fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Real Climate Science, with a post updating on the Australian permanent drought.

It’s sweater week!

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 14 Comments | Trackback URL

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach October 16, 2022 – 9:22 am

Patriotic Pinup

Happy Sunday! Another gorgeous day in the Once And Future Nation Of America. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and….hmm, Devils lost their 2nd game, but, it’s a long season. Dodgers blew it and are out. But, my Pirates won a triple OT thriller, so, there’s that, and the Giants have a chance today. This pinup is by Peter Driben, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. American Power discusses temporary Republicans saving us from the Left
  2. Blazing Cat Fur notes a Colorado school recruiting drag queens as crossing guards
  3. Chicks On The Right covers CNN whining that people care more about inflation than J6
  4. Da Techguy’s Blog highlights the Navy having racial/gender quotas
  5. Dissecting Leftism discusses being told that vaccines prevent transmission
  6. Gates Of Vienna has Elites saying “let them wear sweaters”
  7. Gen Z Conservative features the cancel culture nuts coming after Gwen Stefani
  8. Jihad Watch highlights the difference in treatment over protesting school parents and Muslim parents
  9. Legal Insurrection features Biden clinging to his public health declaration
  10. Moonbattery covers the rational for forcing vaccines was a lie
  11. neo-neocon points out Dems want parents prosecuted for not affirming their child’s gender delusions
  12. Pacific Pundit covers the NBA giving out warning cards if you’re mean to players
  13. Powerline wonders what comes next for Tulsi Gabbard
  14. Sultan Knish notes Marxists killing each other to control America’s cocaine trade
  15. And last, but, not least, The American Conservative highlights abortion safe zones in the UK

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your Pinups for Vets calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me. 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 »

Posted in Patriotic Pinup | 6 Comments | Trackback URL
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