Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach October 30, 2022 – 10:08 am

Patriotic Pinup Halloween

Happy Sunday! Another fantastic day in the Once And Future Nation of America. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and Halloween is only one day away. This pinup is supposed to be by Albert Vargas, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. The First Street Journal says that fear is the mind killer, so, don’t worry about masks
  2. The Gateway Pundit covers the new, pathetic military recruitment ad in the wake of Woke
  3. The OK Corral notes that being pretty won’t help you avoid charges
  4. The Other McCain breaks down what we know about the nutball who attacked drunk Paul Pelosi
  5. The Right Scoop covers MSNBC saying free speech is in danger from free speech
  6. This ain’t Hell… notes that Liz Cheney’s deranged anti-Kari Lake ad helps Kari Lake
  7. Weasel Zippers covers Elon Musk still firing people at Twitter
  8. White House Dossier discusses Biden caught trying to erode Israeli control over Jerusalem
  9. The American Conservative highlights boys just wanting to be girls in a Woke world
  10. Powerline covers Biden’s latest senior moment
  11. Pacific Pundit notes the Washington House race within one point
  12. Newsbusters features CBS News losing it after Musk’s Twitter takeover
  13. Moonbattery covers the media trolled by a fake fired Twitter employee
  14. Legal Insurrection says to cover the evidence, not the media spin, on Pelosi attack
  15. And last, but, not least, Geller Report discusses Florida banning sterilization, castration, and mutilation of “trans” kids

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 »

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Climate Cult Art Protests Are Powerful Or Something

By William Teach October 29, 2022 – 6:14 pm

I’m betting MSNBC would be singing a different tune if the climate cult nutbags were going into MSNBC offices and gluing themselves to stuff, throwing food all around

Why the climate art protests are so powerful
How can we condemn the acts when their premise is sound and their cause is so righteous?

An angry scream. A pained moan. An astonished “Oh my gosh.”

Those were the first three reactions that could be heard after two British climate activists threw tomato soup on one of Vincent Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings at the National Gallery in London in a video that went ultra-viral earlier this month.

The emotional register of those reactions — rage, sadness, shock — were a preview of what was to come. They foreshadowed the most common responses countless people on social media had to the action, during which one activist queried: “What is worth more? Art or life?” (snip)

Since then, climate activists have carried out similar acts again and again. German activists tossed mashed potatoes on a Monet, and a climate protester glued his head to Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” in the Netherlands. While these acts have similarly targeted works of art with protective coverings, they have continued to evoke strong emotions of anger and shock.

Much of the discussion has focused on whether tampering with — and risking the damage of — beloved artistic artifacts does more good or harm for climate activists. Some political and climate-focused analysts have passed around studies arguing that the extremism of the acts could be effective by drawing attention to the issue and building more robust support for more moderate factions of climate activists. Others have flagged studies indicating that it could backfire by alienating potential supporters.

Really, it just shows that these people are unhinged wackjobs. Let them attempt to ruin their own property.

First, their fundamental premise is sound: We are sleepwalking toward disaster and something vexing and distressing must be done to wake us up. It’s imperative for those of us who live comfortably in the global North — and can afford, for now, to ignore climate consequences that are already taking a toll on people on the margins of society all around the world — to experience some kind of alertness-inducing discomfort. I cannot bring myself to feel anger toward activists who are causing people no harm for such a righteous cause at a time when there is nothing remotely close to a mass mobilization on behalf of building a sufficiently sustainable global economy and society.

Second, there is something brilliant going on here as a form of performance art. The actions are evocative because they act as a microcosm of the horror that awaits us. Rehearsing the destruction of what we cherish as most beautiful and most worthy of preservation is surely relevant to the question of whether we’re doing enough to deal with climate change. Because indeed, rising seas and superstorms and wildfires are going to eventually destroy so much of our world’s most magnificent cultural heritage. Simultaneously, in the anguish we experience at the specter of losing art documenting the real world, we are being graced with a more vital reminder: We must protect the natural world with the same zeal we protect beautiful art that captures it.

This is what a cult looks like. Let them go to Zeesham Aleem’s house, throw soup on it, glue themselves, or his fossil fueled vehicle, and see how he feels.

Seriously, does this look rational? Or batshit insane?

Read More »

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 29, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…are mountains which lost their glaciers, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Don Surber, with a post on listening to Real Clear Politics, not 538.

Double shot below the fold, check out Doug Ross @ Journal, with a post on the top 20 tweets.

Read More »

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European Union Bans Sale Of Gas Vehicles In 2035

By William Teach October 29, 2022 – 10:30 am

Citizens of individual nations in Europe: does this make you happy? Your nation didn’t ban them. Bureaucrats in the EU did, using their unaccountable power to force you to comply. The EU was not established for this kind of mandate on citizens lives, but, this is what happens when you give a centralized government power. They take more and more and more

EU member countries agree to ban sale of gas-powered cars and vans starting in 2035

st greta carEuropean lawmakers have gotten the EU’s 27 member states to agree to a plan that effectively bans the sale of gas-powered cars and vans by 2035. They’ve come to an agreement to approve the Commission’s revised reduction targets for passenger cars’ and light vehicles’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Commission’s proposal, which European lawmakers had voted in favor of back in June, aims to reduce the emissions produced by new vehicles in those categories by 100 percent in 13 years’ time. That wouldn’t be achievable without stopping the sale of gas-powered vehicles and selling zero-emission models only.

European Parliament’s lead negotiator Jan Huitema said:

“[P]urchasing and driving zero-emission cars will become cheaper for consumers. I am pleased that today we reached an agreement with the Council on an ambitious revision of the targets for 2030 and supported a 100% target for 2035. This is crucial to reach climate neutrality by 2050 and make clean driving more affordable.”

I’ve perused many articles about this, and not one features a reporter asking members of commission if they are now driving an EV, and, if not, when they are going to ditch their fossil fueled vehicles and go EV.

How will they power these vehicles? Europe is already energy poor, with big concerns about how people will heat their homes this winter. They’ve cut nuclear power (even St. Greta is fine with nuclear), cut natural gas (some thanks to Biden pushing Putin to invade Ukraine), cut coal, and many citizens are having to rely on burning wood. Where will the power come from?

Read: European Union Bans Sale Of Gas Vehicles In 2035 »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Europe, Global Warming | 12 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: NJ Residents Want To Do Something About ‘Climate Change’ But Don’t Want To Pay For It

By William Teach October 29, 2022 – 7:15 am

It’s really easy to say that climate change is Evil and something Needs To Be Done. It’s something else entirely when you have to pay for your beliefs, right?

N.J. residents support climate change defenses but don’t want to pay for them, new poll finds

…

On the precipice of the 10th anniversary of Sandy and over a month after the one-year anniversary of the remnants of Hurricane Ida, a new Rutgers-Eagleton Institute of Politics poll found many residents said anyone but them.

According to the poll, 78% of the 1,002 New Jersey adults surveyed over the phone between Oct. 14 and Oct. 22 said they believed in climate change and nearly the same percentage considered it a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” issue.

However, when asked which residents should pay a “major share” of added costs to make the Garden State more resilient to climate change, numbers varied.

Based on poll results, 45% said upper-income residents who live in risky areas like flood zones should pay a “major share” of the costs. When asked the same question about middle- and lower-income residents living in risky areas, 9% said a “major share” should pay, an excerpt from the 132-page summary of the poll stated. Meanwhile, 46% said this same group should pay a “minor share” and 42% said they should pay “no share at all.”

Those rich folks do pay the major share after big events like Superstorm Sandy. It’s their taxes, especially property taxes, that helped rebuild so many of those Jersey Shore areas.

Instead of shouldering resiliency costs, residents would prefer to have the federal government, fossil fuel companies and producers, as well as other businesses take on the costs, the poll indicates.

Where do they think that federal government money comes from? Are these same people giving up their own use of fossil fuels? Do they think businesses won’t pass on their higher costs?

“This is not something unique to New Jersey, this is what we see with everyday citizens across the country,” Koning added.

Jessica Roman, a research associate at Rutgers-New Brunswick, also highlighted that residents “don’t want the funding coming out of their own pockets, especially in a time of rising inflation.”

So, pretty much the norm. I have multiple articles blogged, and many saved to Pocket, that show this same thing again and again.

Read: Bummer: NJ Residents Want To Do Something About ‘Climate Change’ But Don’t Want To Pay For It »

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Workers Learning That “Quiet Quitting” No Longer Works

By William Teach October 29, 2022 – 7:00 am

You had to know this wasn’t going to last, right?

From the link

One of the first documented cases of quiet quitting was a recruiter I’ll call Justin. Deep into the coronavirus pandemic, after working 10- to 12-hour days for much of his career, Justin had decided to dial it back on the job. When I spoke with him in February, he had whittled his workweek down to 40 hours. In the ensuing months, he went even further, working as little as 30. Every week he worked a little bit less, freeing him up to spend more time with his wife and their newborn baby.

It was Justin, in fact, who helped spark the national debate that’s been raging over quiet quitting. After speaking with him and other recovering overachievers, I wrote about how hustle culture, thanks to the job security granted by the roaring economy, was giving way to coasting culture. When a popular career coach on TikTok riffed on my story, the phrase “quiet quitting” became something of a new cultural dividing line. You either loved the Justins of the world for striking a reasonable work-life balance, or condemned them as slackers and cheats.

The problem here is that these quiet quitters didn’t just cut back into what made sense, they cut back way beyond that. They weren’t doing the “work smarter, not harder.” They weren’t just doing the job and not going further. They were deciding to as little as possible. And, to a degree, they were able to get away with it before. Not now

But by the time the US was furiously debating his new approach to work, Justin was already shifting gears. Over the summer, as the economy began to slow, he noticed his clients were scaling back their hiring plans. Performance reviews seemed to be getting tougher. Some of his colleagues were let go. “It made me nervous,” he told me. “It hit me that I’m the only one who works in my family.” So he decided to “play it a little more safe.” Today Justin, the OG Quiet Quitter, is back to going above and beyond. He’s working 50 hours a week.

At the moment, the job market is still strong. But with job openings down by 15% since March’s record high, it’s clear that the frenzy of the Great Resignation is beginning to moderate. After a year of scrambling to accommodate their restless employees, employers are regaining the upper hand. Workers are sensing the shift in the mounting headlines about company layoffs, the budget cuts that are limiting their raises, and the heightened scrutiny of their productivity. The smart ones, like Justin, are adjusting their behavior accordingly.

They’re learning they are replaceable. They’re learning that raises and bonuses and such won’t come when you do less than the minimum. That if layoffs come they’ll be the first on the block. That the people who are in charge require actual work for compensation.

Companies were also hanging on to every employee, no matter how bad they were at their jobs. At the end of 2021, human-resources managers reported that they were going to “manage out” fewer than 2% of low performers, compared with the usual 5%. The national layoff rate plunged to a two-decade low. When I spoke with Justin in February, he exuded the confidence that many employees were feeling about their job security. “Companies have a vice grip on even their moderately good employees,” he told me. “I was like, look, they’re not going to fire me. It would take them months to find someone new and train them up. My lessened productivity is better than zero productivity.” Employees were doing the math — and it added up to less work for the same pay.

You may be good at your job, but, if you aren’t putting the work in, you’ll be part of the 5%

Things today look very different. For starters, consider what’s going on at the company formerly known as Facebook. As my colleague Kali Hays reported, executives at Meta have instructed managers to bucket 15% of their employees as “needs improvement” — HRspeak for “shape up or ship out.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed his staff that he would be “turning up the heat” on performance goals to shed employees who couldn’t meet those standards. “Some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you,” he said. “That self-selection is OK with me.” In a telling observation, one employee noted that Meta’s moves amounted to “quiet layoffs.”

Of course, it’s not the fault of slacking employees that Meta and the Metaverse stink.

The same pattern is playing out elsewhere in the tech industry. Over the summer, managers at Snap were told to put at least 10% of their workers on performance improvement. A few weeks later, the company cut its full-time workforce by 20%. At Google, CEO Sundar Pichai — complaining that the company has become “slower” as its headcount has grown — declared that he wanted to increase efficiency by 20%. At Oracle, which let go of hundreds of employees in August and again this month, employees worry that more cuts are coming.

Guess who’s gone first?

Read: Workers Learning That “Quiet Quitting” No Longer Works »

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Climate Today: Buses, Kids Travel To COP27, Climate Contagion

By William Teach October 28, 2022 – 3:00 pm

Have fun, kiddies, and thank your benevolant leaders when the buses are either way too cold or way too hot, because they can’t spare the energy

More kids to ride in ‘clean’ school buses, mostly electric

Kamala Climate ClownNearly 400 school districts spanning all 50 states and Washington, D.C., along with several tribes and U.S. territories, are receiving roughly $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500 “clean” school buses under a new federal program.

The Biden administration is making the grants available as part of a wider effort to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles and reduce air pollution near schools and communities.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announced the grant awards Wednesday in Seattle. The new, mostly electric school buses will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save money and better protect children’s health, they said.

Hmm, so, Kamala took a long fossil fueled flight to announce this? Did she then drive from the airport to the press conference in an electric bus, or a large fossil fueled convoy? BTW

…compared to a new electric school bus, which typically runs between $350,000 and $400,000. Traditional diesel school buses are usually in the $125,000 to $150,000 range.

Sounds cost effective, especially when they’re stuck in the snow. Were the kids treated to Kamala’s cackle/inappropriate laughter?

Colorado College Students to Travel to COP 27 to Discuss Climate Change

This November, 10 Colorado College students will travel to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to participate in the 27th Conference of Parties (COP) on climate change. The students will be accompanied by Professor Sarah Hautzinger and Mindfulness Fellow Myra Jackson.

Nothing says “we believe in climate doom” like taking a long fossil fueled flight, eh?

Treat the Climate Change Contagion

After a slow start, hurricane season is here: A flurry of named storms formed within days during September. Fiona devastated Puerto Rico, and less than two weeks later, Ian battered the west coast of Florida before it and its remnants moved up and hit the Eastern Seaboard.

Extreme weather events like Ian and Fiona have become more intense because of climate change. That reality has implications for those of us in health care. We have a duty to protect and advance the health of our patients. Climate change is killing them, and we must change the way we practice medicine in response.

We can start by screening our patients for the impact of climate change as if it were a new vital sign.

You mean people can be affected by the weather? Is this new?

Read: Climate Today: Buses, Kids Travel To COP27, Climate Contagion »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach October 28, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is a perfect spot for wind turbines, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Common Cents Blog, with a post telling Republicans to fly those American flags.

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Musk Buying Twitter Is A Danger To Free Speech Or Something

By William Teach October 28, 2022 – 10:30 am

Media folks and those who love to censor people for Wrongthink have been apoplectic over Elon Musk buying Twitter. They do not want you to have your say if it conflicts with Modern Socialist dogma. And now

AP sources: Musk in control of Twitter, ousts top executives

Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter and ousted the CEO, chief financial officer and the company’s top lawyer, two people familiar with the deal said Thursday night.

The people wouldn’t say if all the paperwork for the deal, originally valued at $44 billion, had been signed or if the deal has closed. But they said Musk is in charge of the social media platform and has fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and Chief Legal Counsel Vijaya Gadde. Neither person wanted to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the deal.

How will it all work out? That’s the big question. Will there be less advertising in tweets and more of a pay model? How about the big one, which how it censors users, suspends them, and bans them. Some people deserve it, such as those who threaten and dox. Others, it’s been for saying things Twitter mods and unhinged leftists do not like. I had my original account “permanently suspended” for that, and have been suspended twice for tweeting Wrongthink. Same with so many other Conservatives. But, see, letting you have your say is (LA Times paywalled version here)

Op-Ed: How Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter could threaten free speech

As he prepares to take over Twitter, Elon Musk has said that, in the name of upholding free speech, he will dial back safeguards on the platform that are there to protect against disinformation. This would be a mistake, and not just because disinformation has fueled a crisis of faith in democracy and impeded pandemic response at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

Disinformation, though largely protected by the 1st Amendment against government control, can also imperil free speech itself. If Musk is serious about fostering open discourse, he needs to account for the dangers that disinformation poses to expression as he takes over one of the world’s most influential online platforms.

So Democrats like Eric Swalwall, along with other Democrats, who said they had evidence that Trump colluded with Russia should be banned? Who decides what’s misinformation/disinformation? There are still 9/11 Truthers on Twitter.

When arenas for public discourse are flooded with disinformation, free speech begins to shed its value. If audiences lose their grip on what is true and what is false, they can become primed to distrust everything and it becomes impossible to persuade people, even with the most compelling argument or evidence. If platforms are riddled with propaganda and political falsehoods aimed to skew election results, prospects for genuine discourse on matters of public policy or local affairs evaporate. If the search for reliable information yields nothing but a morass of comingled facts and falsehoods, people eventually stop searching.

Then Democrats like Katie Hobbs should be banned for blaming Kari Lake for the break in at the Hobbs office. It’s a seriously deranged attempt to censor people, but, we shouldn’t expect anything different from the Democratic Party run media. If it was their folks being censored, they’d be all against it.

The 1st Amendment prevents the government from suppressing most forms of disinformation because the Supreme Court has recognized that if permitted to regulate such speech, authorities would not be able to resist the temptation to use that power in self-serving ways, to silence critics and repress dissent.

Uh, no. The 1st Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The only ones authorized at the federal level to pass laws is the Congress, and they are 100% forbidden to stop your speech.

But the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply to social media companies since it only constrains the power of government. Online platforms can, for the most part, decide whether to suppress speech. But with platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Google so widely used, the place of free speech as an underpinning of society is at stake in their choices. Moreover, in a world powered by algorithms, speech moves differently than it did in an era of printed pamphlets and town meetings. Studies have shown that, on Twitter, disinformation travels faster and farther than truth.

If it looks like BS, I’ll look it up, just like with 9/11 Trutherism and ‘climate change’.

If Musk is serious about enhancing Twitter’s potential as a vehicle for free speech, he should focus on how to make the platform a hospitable place for dialogue, truth-seeking, citizen’s engagement — things at the heart of why free speech matters. Some of the steps he reportedly contemplates, including giving users more control over what they see on the platform, could help. So could improving Twitter’s system for appealing the removal of tweets and disabling of accounts, clearer communications about which rules posts are found to violate and why, and greater transparency to allow researchers to study the platform and determine whether and how political biases may infect content moderation.

But if Musk follows through on his promise to create open season for disinformation on Twitter he will risk destroying free speech in one of our global villages in the name of trying to save it.

If Democrats are too weak minded to do their own research, that’s on them. And they’re the ones who lie the most. Anything they do not like they label disinformation/misinformation. If I say something like “it’s probably not a good idea to let people (transgenders) with a higher rate of suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts around military grade weapons”, is that misinformation or fact? Yes, we can ban bots with bullshit, and, I bet Musk allows that to continue. Censoring and banning simply for an opinion that Leftists do not like? Not so much. It’s nothing new: this is why they wanted Fox News shut down, why they wanted Rush, Hannity, and Beck, among others, off the radio. Why they wanted Net Neutrality.

Read: Musk Buying Twitter Is A Danger To Free Speech Or Something »

Posted in Democrats, Web/Tech, Wonky Media | 38 Comments | Trackback URL

Climate Cult Fail: Wind Farm Being Dismantled To Expand Coal Mine

By William Teach October 28, 2022 – 7:00 am

Germans, and German politicians, are realizing that Wind just cannot provide them with the power they need to heat their homes this winter. Unfortunately, they have to look towards coal, which I am not a fan of, as I’ve stated numerous times. But, trying to get natural gas at this time wouldn’t work, they need power now

Wind farm in Germany is being dismantled to expand coal mine

A wind farm in Germany is being dismantled to expand the Garzweiler lignite mine. One of eight turbines installed at the location in 2001 has already been removed. Nevertheless, the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia said it would phase out coal by 2030, as did RWE, the company that owns the mine.

Wind turbines near the Garzweiler open pit mine in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, run by German energy giant RWE, is being removed to make way for more lignite exploitation. (snip)

The court in the German town of Münster ruled this year in favor of expanding the mine. Climate activists opposed to the plans called the decision cynical and hypocritical.

The court found that no alternative surface mines would meet the necessary demand for lignite. Security of supply is currently the priority while “climate protection remains one of the key challenges of our time,” RWE pointed out and declared it seeks to support both, the article adds.

Wind just cannot provide the power for the heating that’s necessary. Maybe one day. But, if the climate activists love it so much, let them put turbines up in their back yards, see if that provides the heat for the winter.

Read: Climate Cult Fail: Wind Farm Being Dismantled To Expand Coal Mine »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Energy, Global Warming | 20 Comments | Trackback URL
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