Americans Are No Longer Buying Into COVID Boosters

By William Teach September 24, 2022 – 7:00 am

The problem is that people really do not trust them that much anymore. There are way too many data points on people who’ve gotten them getting COVID, and then reinfections in short order. The only benefit is, supposedly, keeping people from getting a bad case of COVID

Data show just 4.4 million Americans have had the new COVID booster, but experts expect accelerating demand in the coming weeks

The first tallies for the new bivalent booster are out, with some 4.4 million people in the U.S. having received the updated shot, according to health officials. Meanwhile, public health experts continue to fret about President Joe Biden’s recent remark that “the pandemic is over.”

Health experts said it is too early to predict whether demand would match up with the 171 million doses of the new booster that the U.S. ordered for the fall, the Associated Press reported. The new shot targets the most common omicron strains as well as the original virus strain.

“No one would go looking at our flu shot uptake at this point and be like, ‘Oh, what a disaster,’” David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the AP. “If we start to see a large uptick in cases, I think we’re going to see a lot of people getting the [new COVID] vaccine.”

Most have moved on. A lot of people have removed themselves from the mask cult. And no one trusts the data on how good the booster works.

The daily average for new cases stood at 55,591 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 19% from two weeks ago. But cases are rising in 20 states, and are up by a lot in some.

Washington state has seen a 47% increase in cases in the last two weeks, while New York is up 45%, Massachusetts is up 40%, Maine is up 36% and New Jersey is up 32%.

So, places which had been epicenters of COVID vaccine worship and massive restricts. The Powers That Be want to try to keep scaring us. Most of us are done with this.

Read: Americans Are No Longer Buying Into COVID Boosters »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus | 28 Comments | Trackback URL

Top Bank Execs Tell Rashida Tlaib She’s Nuts Regarding Climate Doom

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 3:00 pm

They missed a great opportunity to ask Tlaib if she’s stopped using fossil fuels herself. Perhaps it’s just me, but, when someone starts yammering about climate doom that’s the first question I ask them

Top bank CEOs decline radical climate demands from Rep. Tlaib: ‘That would be the road to Hell for America’

Leaders in the banking industry clashed with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Wednesday after Tlaib demanded that they commit to immediately end all financing of all fossil fuel products.

J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon told the far-left representative during a House Financial Services Committee hearing that her request would lead to despair and ruin.

“You have all committed, as you all know, to transition the emissions from lending and investment activities to align with pathways to net-zero in 2050… So no new fossil fuel production, starting today, so that’s like zero. I would like to ask all of you and go down the list, cause again, you all have agreed to doing this. Please answer with a simple yes or no, does your bank have a policy against funding new oil and gas products, Mr. Diamond?” Tlaib asked.

“Absolutely not, and that would be the road to hell for America,” Dimon responded.

And they all told Tlaib that they would continue to loan money, because, you know, that’s what banks do. If doing away with fossil fuels was so easy, then, why have most Warmists not done so? Who wants to bet that Tlaib flies back and forth between D.C. and Michigan?

Critics of the environmental policies Tlaib advocates, argue that those policies have already reduced funding to fossil fuel projects which has exacerbated the energy shortages seen in Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year. American financier Kyle Bass, for example, argued that the transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy must not be rushed.

“These transitions take forty years, Joe. The move from coal to natural gas took forty years. They take a very, very, very long time. We can’t just flip a switch,” he told CNBC in an interview last month.

And how’s that working in Europe?

Read: Top Bank Execs Tell Rashida Tlaib She’s Nuts Regarding Climate Doom »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Energy, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is a scary looking sky from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Legal Insurrection, with a post on the Martha’s Vineyard’s Citizens For Sanity ad. Progressive or parody?

Read: If All You See… »

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Time: Shipping Migrants To Sanctuary Cities Is An Attack On The Constitution Or Something

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 10:30 am

Well, this is a new one. There have plenty of attacks on DeSantis and Abbott, even accusing them of trafficking, as you well know. Now we have attacking the Constitution

Republican Governors Shipping Migrants Around the Country Is a Disturbing Attack on the Constitution

(Multiple paragraphs about the shipping of the illegals/migrants, all of which you know)

President Biden and others have derided these trips, as well as the ones arranged by DeSantis, as “political stunts.” They are more disturbing than that. They are lawless acts, deliberate attempts by some states, acting through their governors, to contravene the basic premise and purpose of the union established by the U.S. Constitution.

States have always had to find ways to coexist even when they have divergent interests or policy preferences. The Constitution itself was adopted to resolve coordination difficulties the states had in matters such as national defense, the conduct of foreign affairs, the creation of a common currency, and financing a national government. The federal courts, also established by the Constitution and further developed by Congress, provide another avenue where states can peacefully and lawfully resolve their differences, adjudicating particular disputes that arise between them. Even before such fights ripen into lawsuits, states, like individuals, sometimes need to negotiate terms of cooperation with one another. There is an established legal mechanism for doing this, called an interstate compact. It, too, is rooted in the United States Constitution, which has been interpreted by federal courts to set ground rules for ensuring such state-to-state agreements have the assent of the federal government.

Texas, Arizona, and Florida are all already party to numerous interstate compacts, spanning everything from multistate lotteries to water apportionment to child custody and adoption to professional licensing. Had Abbott, Ducey and DeSantis been trying to develop multistate mechanisms for accommodating asylum seekers and other lawful migrants, they could have approached their counterparts in other states to hash out an agreed upon plan.

That’s the argument from Heidi Li Feldman, a Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University Law Center. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Abbott, DeSantis, and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey didn’t establish a compact to ship illegals/migrants to Democratic Party run areas which call themselves sanctuary cities. That’s some serious weak sauce from a professor of law. There is a compact, in which people can cross borders of states as much as they want if they’re here.

And, not one word from Feldman regarding Biden flying the same people around the country in the dead of night and dropping them off in small town America with zero warning.

Instead, Abbott, Ducey, and now DeSantis have chosen to ambush the governments of sister states by surprising them with the arrival of busloads and planeloads of migrants at unannounced times and places. They have refused requests from mayors in other states to work together. The buses and planes sent by Abbott, Ducey, and DeSantis discharge their passengers wherever will get the most press coverage or will cause inconvenience and difficulties for residents and government responders.

Ambush? Now, that’s funny. Still no mention of Biden doing this. Or, border states being ambushed by massive inflows of migrants/illegals.

The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly forbid one state from purposely creating disorder in another. But attempts to do this subvert one basic premise for joining together in legal union: peaceful, cooperative co-existence among states, as well as between them and the federal government. As state governors, Ducey, Abbott, and DeSantis have acted extra-constitutionally, even anti-constitutionally. While they have not launched armed attacks on other states or the federal government, they have shown a refusal to participate in the basic design and ambition of the American constitutional union. That is a step toward secession.

So, sending these migrants creates disorder to non-border states, ones who advocate for open borders and now get to share in it? It’s silly, very silly, but, the point here is not to create a strong argument, it’s to create a talking point that the three governors and their states are violating the Constitution (the same one Democrats hate because it stop their authoritarianism).

Read: Time: Shipping Migrants To Sanctuary Cities Is An Attack On The Constitution Or Something »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Democrats, Illegal Immigration | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

LA Times: Americans Don’t Care About Climate Doom Or Something

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 7:00 am

This has given LA Times columnist Nicholas Goldberg a big sad

Nicholas Goldberg: Americans don’t care about climate change. Here’s how to wake them up

Why is the greatest threat to the planet of so little concern to most Americans?

It couldn’t possibly be due to the fact that those pushing this the hardest seem to always fail to mention what they’ve done in their own lives, could it? That they show themselves as climahypocrites? That they want Other People to be forced to practice the beliefs that the Warmists won’t?

It’s shocking, frankly, that global warming ranks 24th on a list of 29 issues that voters say they’ll think about when deciding whom to vote for in November, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Only 30% of voters say they are “very worried” about it and more than two-thirds say they “rarely” or “never” discuss the issue with family or friends.

No, it really isn’t. When a slight increase in global temperatures in 170 years is matched up against real issues it loses. Many care about it in theory, but, not in practice. And this is after 30+ years of fearmongering, which has really gotten bad over the last 10 or so

How can people be so blithely unconcerned when the clear consensus of scientists is that climate disruption is reaching crisis levels and will result not only in more raging storms, droughts, wildfires and heat waves, but very possibly in famine, mass migration, collapsing economies and war?

Because science is not consensus, and, if it was all so bad, people like Nicholas would tell us how they’ve started driving an EV and made their lives carbon neutral. I’ve read a lot of ‘climate change’ articles over the years. A lot. And of all those, perhaps less than .5% mention what these people have actually done in their own lives.

In his forthcoming book, “The Activist’s Media Handbook,” due out in November, David Fenton says that the forces trying to rouse the world to fight climate change — including philanthropic foundations, environmental organizations and activist groups, among others — have by and large ignored the most rudimentary tenets of marketing and advertising, to their detriment and the planet’s.

That’s because they believe that the business of selling ideas is fundamentally dirty, manipulative and beneath them.

They’re convinced that data, truth and evidence are what matter, Fenton says. To them (and we’re talking here about lots of well-intentioned lawyers, scientists and people who studied the humanities), good ideas sell themselves.

But, see, they don’t provide data, truth, and evidence. They rely on scaremongering, doomsaying, computer models, crystal ball, and a failure to, yes, practice what they preach. And, among the same old ideas, such as keeping the message simple, Nicholas never recommends that practicing what you preach idea.

Read: LA Times: Americans Don’t Care About Climate Doom Or Something »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 27 Comments | Trackback URL

TDS: We Can Save The Nation From Trump By Rewriting The Constitution

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 6:45 am

Seriously, do these people understand how bat-guano-shit insane they appear?

The Best Way To Save The Constitution From Donald Trump Is To Rewrite It

Perhaps you have wandered through much of your life only mildly aware and mostly indifferent to the fact that there is something called Constitution Day. If so, consider me a fellow traveler.

But in these times, in the wake of the Jan. 6 committee’s work exposing Donald Trump’s assaults on rule of law and the orderly transition of power, many responsible people have concluded that Constitution Day complacency is a privilege we can no longer afford. The official holiday was Sept. 17 (you knew that, right?) and in the week before and continuing this week there have been a gusher of speeches and symposiums devoted to extolling the Constitution and illuminating the threats to it. (snip)

The occasion underlined two related Trump-era paradoxes that likely will shape our politics long after Trump’s shadow lifts.

First, Trump is properly seen as a constitutional menace, but from a progressive perspective many of the most offensive features of his tenure were not in defiance of the Constitution. Instead, they flowed directly from its most problematic provisions. He was in office in the first place because the presidency is chosen by the Electoral College rather than by the popular vote. His influence will live for decades because partisan manipulation of the Senate’s judicial confirmation power gave him three Supreme Court justices, who have no term limits and face no practical mechanisms of accountability. Like some other presidents, but more so, he used the Constitution’s absolute pardon power for nakedly self-interested reasons. In short, Trump may be an enemy of the Constitution but he is also the president who most zealously exploited its defects.

Obviously, getting rid of the Electoral College is a big thing for the Progressives (nice Fascists), who aren’t happy that they can lose playing by the established rules

Correcting or circumventing what progressives reasonably perceive as the infirmities of the Constitution, in fact, seems likely to be the preeminent liberal objective of the next generation. Progress on issues ranging from climate change to ensuring that technology giants act in the public interest will hinge on creating a new constitutional consensus. Trying to place more sympathetic justices on the Supreme Court is not likely to be a fully adequate remedy. There are more fundamental challenges embedded in the document itself — in particular the outsized power it gives to states, at a time when the most urgent problems and most credible remedies are national in character.

They are likewise unhappy they can’t jam their unhinged agenda through at the national level. They talk a lot about “democracy”, but, aren’t happy they can’t get it through playing by the established rules.

Here, though, is where the breakdown in constitutional consensus becomes potentially climactic — as it did during the Civil War, and threatened to in the New Deal. Popular majority or no, most of those amendments would be opposed by conservatives — which under the terms of the existing Constitution means they likely would not pass. It takes three quarters of the states to approve an amendment, a provision that gives many small, conservative states wildly disproportionate power over the fate of the nation.

This is hardly a new problem, but it is one that threatens to reach a breaking point. The political scientist Norman Ornstein has popularized an arresting statistic, one that is validated by demographic experts. By 2040, 70 percent of Americans will live in just 15 states. That means 30 percent of the population — coming from places that are less diverse and more conservative — will choose 70 senators. Already each senator from Wyoming, the least populous state, exercises his power on behalf of less than 600,000 people, while each senator from California, the most populous, represents nearly 40 million. This distortion of democracy, already hard to defend, could become the defining feature of national life.

See, it’s a big problem that the system works as written

But there are other ways short of violent rupture to survive those moments, as now, when the Constitution no longer reflects the imperatives of the moment. One of those ways is when artful improvisation creates a new consensus. The Supreme Court struck down much of FDR’s initial program, but the New Deal’s core assumption — that we live in a national economy with a robust and responsive national government — prevailed, helped along by a dramatically new understanding of the interstate commerce clause. Another way to survive is good luck. In the Cold War, presidents had (and still have) a power never contemplated in the Constitution — the ability to blow up the world with nuclear bombs on command, in minutes, with no approval by Congress or anyone else.

In other words, they’re say F the Constitution, just do as they want. Because Trump, you know.

Read: TDS: We Can Save The Nation From Trump By Rewriting The Constitution »

Posted in Constitution, Democrats | 10 Comments | Trackback URL

Millennials And Gen Z Need To Get Elected To Do Something About Climate Doom

By William Teach September 22, 2022 – 3:00 pm

They could all give up their use of fossil fueled travel (especially for selfies at places they don’t care about, just wanting the picture), stop using so much electricity for streaming videos, and so much more, making their lives carbon neutral, right?

Millennials and Gen Z want to stop a climate catastrophe. But first they have to get elected.

When a group of young climate activists confronted Dianne Feinstein at her San Francisco office in 2019, the six-term Democratic senator cited her deep experience in Washington in refusing their demand that she endorse the Green New Deal.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing,” Feinstein, then 85, told the students. “You come in here and you say, ‘It has to be my way or the highway.’ I don’t respond to that. I’ve gotten elected, I just ran, I was elected by almost a million-vote plurality, and I know what I’m doing. So, you know, maybe people should listen a little bit.”

Feinstein added that the Green New Deal, a package of aggressive environmental reforms championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, would die at the hands of Senate Republicans.

“You can take that back to whoever sent you here,” the senator told Isha Clarke, a 16-year-old student from Oakland.

One student protested that Feinstein should instead listen to her constituents.

“You didn’t vote for me,” Feinstein chided.

On one hand, that really shows what federally elected officials think. That they’re better than the average person, that they do not need to listen to the citizens of their states, that they are not beholden to them. Especially Democrats. On the other hand, these children invaded her office, refused to leave, and Demanded not only an audience, but, that Feinstein do what they say. They’re children, they really have no life experience, and it’s a pretty poor way to get someone to listen. Feinstein should have asked them what they’re doing in their own lives.

Clarke, now a sophomore at Howard University and cofounder of Youth vs. Apocalypse, told Insider the protest got a “huge reaction” from the public.

“We are literally facing the end of humanity and politicians are like, ‘Sorry, no can do’ in the face of people who it’s going to impact,” Clarke said.

The nonbinding Green New Deal resolution, meanwhile, went nowhere — just as Feinstein predicted.

The episode illustrates the tension between the nation’s youngest Americans, who are demanding political action on a huge scale to fight the planet’s climate crisis, and aging government leaders who don’t share their sense of urgency.

So, basically, instead of making their own lives carbon neutral, they need to get elected to force their Beliefs on Everyone Else. And then there’s Youth vs. Apocalypse (non-paywalled at Yahoo)

The spread of ‘climate doom’ on TikTok is hurting the climate justice movement – and Gen Z

…

The climate crisis has become quite the hot topic on social media apps like Twitter and Instagram. On TikTok, the hashtag #ClimateChange has about 3 billion views, with countless videos under it. Many posts revolving around the climate crisis depict a teen dramatically posing while a sad song plays in the background. “None of our efforts are helping the climate crisis, the world is ending, there’s no point in even trying anymore” is plastered across the screen in bold text. We’re all viewing this content – and internalizing it, whether we like it or not.

“Climate doomism” is the idea that global warming is so advanced that any effort to combat it is meaningless. According to environmentalist Isais Hernandez, it “is often used as a scare tactic to disempower collectivized communities on their journey for environmental liberation.” (snip)

While some say videos that spread fear can be a call to action, they also often cause people to lose motivation with the climate crisis. Ultimately, people might give up their efforts because they think they will not have a lasting impact. To be clear, the grave effects of climate change need to be emphasized. But when videos that do nothing but spread fear gain thousands of likes, harm is done.

The adults have turned these kids into emotional messes, freaking about something that’s not going to happen. And making it worse by freaking themselves out. All while refusing to do much of anything in their own lives.

Read: Millennials And Gen Z Need To Get Elected To Do Something About Climate Doom »

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If All You See…

By William Teach September 22, 2022 – 1:00 pm

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

The blog of the day is Gen Z Conservative, with a post a woman covered in tattoos complaining she can’t get a job.

Please stop doing the hand up near the head/grabbing hair thing. It just looks so awkward.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

LOL: Democrat Strongholds Begging White House For Help With “Migrants”

By William Teach September 22, 2022 – 10:30 am

It continues to be funny that sanctuary cities are losing their minds over receiving a fraction of the number of illegals/migrants that the border state cities are getting. What about all the small towns who received a bunch via Biden’s dead of night flights?

Dem strongholds beg the White House for help with migrants

Blue cities for months have pleaded for help from the White House as they struggle with the massive influx of migrants. They claim they’re still waiting.

Since the summer, mayors in Chicago, New York City and Washington, D.C., have faced massive strains on their shelters and health services after Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott bused thousands of migrants to their cities from the southern border.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, this week said the situation is so dire that he suggested housing migrants on cruise ships to help alleviate the crisis.

“We do need help. We need the federal government, the state government, to play a role,” Adams told reporters on Tuesday. “This is a humanitarian crisis created by human hands.”

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, also a Democrat, last week said that she met with officials at the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies and “made it very clear” that they need a plan to help.

“We need federal support, resources, communication and collaboration,” she said. “And that has to come in short order.” But that can’t happen, however, until the city first applies for funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Cue the tiny violins. They got what they wanted. They said all illegals are welcome. Abbott and DeSantis sent them a bunch. Now they don’t want them?

Abbott’s move has burdened resources and drawn outrage from city leaders, who say the Texas GOP governor and DeSantis are using migrants as pawns in their political stunts. The Republican governors, who are both running for reelection this year, have said they’re trying to draw attention to the Biden administration’s border policies — but the Democratic city leaders say the transports are creating a humanitarian crisis.

See, it’s a political stunt. It is. And it’s worked. It’s shown the hypocrisy of Democrats who support open borders and unfettered immigration. They’re getting a small taste of what those border cities are dealing with. Will it change minds among Independents and some Democrats?

“What our country needs is for Congress to fix the immigration system,” Bowser said in a statement after the vote. “We also encourage the Administration to fulfill the requests of cities and states that are receiving buses and planes with no coordination or notification from those sending them.”

Correct. We need to fix it so that people cannot simply show up and demand asylum, which most won’t qualify for, and be let into the country, after which most will simply disappear and blow off their hearings. Then demand legal status years down the line, demand citizenship for their children. Let them apply for asylum outside of the U.S. If you’re caught crossing the border, you’re immediately put back across the border.

Read: LOL: Democrat Strongholds Begging White House For Help With “Migrants” »

Posted in Democrats, Illegal Immigration | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

People’s Republik Of California Looks To Ban Big Rig Sales

By William Teach September 22, 2022 – 7:00 am

California is a on a serious roll. I just have to wonder, if it’s so darned important why not ban the sale now? How about banning the use of big rigs? You know, if Saving Earth From Climate Doom is so important?

California seeks to ban sales of diesel big rigs in a bold bid to cut pollution

st greta carSaying they had a “moral obligation,” California regulators could soon ban the sale of diesel big rigs by 2040, ending a long reliance on the polluting vehicles that are the backbone of the American economy.

The proposal by staff of the California Air Resources Board would further require that, by 2035, medium- and heavy-duty trucks entering ports and railyards must be zero emission and that state and local government fleets be so by 2027.

The new regulations would likely demand a radical buildup of electric charging infrastructure, placing new stresses on California’s already fragile power grid and force the trucking industry to reshape how it does business. Regulators and activists say any disruption would ultimately be outweighed by lives and money saved.

It’s very easy to say this, but, once the price hikes hit, it’ll be real. Once truckers decide to blow off California ports (which is already a problem with the existing PRC requirements) and it’s harder to get goods, it’ll be real. If Mexico is smart, they’ll work to make ports for ships, with special access and roads for truckers, reduced or no tariffs, moving the goods through New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas

“Pound for pound, heavy-duty trucks are putting out far more pollution than anything else on the road,” said Will Barrett, national senior director for clean air advocacy with the American Lung Assn. “And that’s really directly contributing to the fact that California has the worst air pollution in the country.”

The California Air Resources Board, which must vote on the truck proposal, is expected to consider it Oct. 27.

You know this will pass. And, in fairness, the non-greenhouse gas elements of their exhausts are bad for air quality, but, much better than they used to be. It’s just a matter of not really having an alternative that works as well, as dependable, and affordable, nor is there the infrastructure available.

Remember, all the members are appointed, not elected, so, they have zero accountability to the citizens, and can make massive decisions all on their own. And I still have not seen any reporter ask any of the members if they’ve switched to electric vehicles in their own lives.

Read: People’s Republik Of California Looks To Ban Big Rig Sales »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 14 Comments | Trackback URL
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