If All You See…

…is a horrible fossil fueled vehicle parking lot, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The First Street Journal, with a post wondering where our privacy is.

Read: If All You See… »

Bummer: Tow Trucks Refuse To Help Ottawa Remove Freedom Truckers Trucks

Blue collar folks refusing to help The Man go after other Blue Collar folks

Ottawa officials say towing companies are refusing to move the Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates in the city’s streets

Ottawa city officials say towing companies contracted to work with the city are refusing to move vehicles used in the protests by Canadian truck drivers who oppose COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

“I’ve contacted them all and they’re all refusing, as of today, to provide heavy tow truck work,” city manager Steve Kanellakos told reporters Monday evening, the CBC reported.

The streets of Ottawa are littered with hundreds of trucks and other vehicles as protesters — who have dubbed themselves the “Freedom Convoy” — have illegally parked in the streets, clogging the city’s blocks. The demonstration has been in progress for nearly two weeks.

According to the CBC, the protesters have said they will only leave their posts when vaccine mandates are lifted, and it is very difficult to tow a truck without the help of the driver.

The Progressive elites do not like when their worker bee base revolts and refuses to do what they say. And inconveniences the elites. And the progressives who aren’t elites but Believe that they are Special. Blue collar folks are just another sector for the Elites to use when convenient, abuse when they aren’t.

Saskatchewan to remove proof of COVID-19 vaccination, negative test requirement on Feb. 14

On Monday, Feb. 14 at 12:01 a.m., Saskatchewan will put an end to the requirement to provide proof of vaccination or proof of a negative COVID-19 test result to access businesses and other public spaces.

“Proof of vaccination has been an effective policy, but its effectiveness has run its course,” a statement from premier Scott Moe reads.

“The benefits no longer outweigh the costs. It’s time to heal the divisions over vaccination in our families, in our communities and in our province. It’s time for proof of vaccination requirements to end.”

Just a coincidence.

Canada: Alberta Will End Mandated Vaccine Passports at Midnight

Just a coincidence. Alberta and many other provinces are also looking to slowly remove their mask mandates. These are the same provinces which refused to remove any mandates when the COVID positivity rate was under 5%.

Meanwhile, there are also protests at the Ambassador Bridge, which goes between Windsor and Detroit, and accounts for 27% of cross border trade. The bridge has been, at times, completely shut down over the past few days.

(Breitbart) Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Rakesh Naidu was less sympathetic to the protesters.

“Many businesses have been through so much in the last two years. This couldn’t come at a worse time. To constrict the border like this will impact everyone not just in Windsor, but Ontario and Canada. You have thousands of businesses that rely on the border and trade coming through. You have inventory based on just-in-time delivery,” Naidu told the Windsor Star on Tuesday.

“Any disruption of supply can lead to shifts being canceled and if it continues, closing operations,” Naidu cautioned. “All of that doesn’t just impact the businesses in all the different sectors, but consumers like you and me. This is not just manufacturing, but goods we all consume as well, like fresh produce, or chemicals and fuel that we need.”

See, it’s fine when the Powers That Be lock everyone down, force them to comply, mess with businesses and the economy, but, when the peons do it to get rid of mandates, well, that’s a step too far. Anyhow, if the government was smart they’d simply remove the vaccination requirement for cross border truckers, which was the original demand, and just move on.

Read: Bummer: Tow Trucks Refuse To Help Ottawa Remove Freedom Truckers Trucks »

Good News: Army To Make Themselves Less Capable With Electric Vehicles

It’s bad enough that the US Army is allowing in transgenders (who have a much higher rate of mental health issues, suicidal tendencies around military grade weapons), reducing physical fitness standards, and raft of other Woke stuff. So, sure, let’s worry more about ‘climate change’ rather than protecting the U.S. and being able to project power

U.S. Army’s first climate plan calls to slash emissions and build electric vehicle fleet

The U.S. Army on Tuesday unveiled its first climate strategy focused on protecting and training soldiers amid worsening climate disasters like floods, heat waves and drought and cutting the service’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The Army’s plan, a response to President Joe Biden’s executive orders calling on agencies to adapt to climate change, directs the service to slash its emissions in half from 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

As part of the strategy, the Army plans to install a microgrid on all of its installations by 2035 and have an fully electric non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2035. It will also work to cut emissions from buildings and include climate change threat mitigation into its land management decisions.

The military considers non-tactical vehicles as

Non-Tactical Vehicles (NTV) comprise of any commercial motor vehicle, trailer, material handling or engineering equipment that carries passengers or cargo acquired for administrative, direct mission, or operational support of military functions. Sedans, station wagons, carryalls, vans, and buses, leased or owned, are considered “non-tactical.”

Well, thankfully this doesn’t apply to true mission vehicles. Yet.

The service has already started or completed 950 renewable energy projects, including a 2.1 megawatt solar field at Fort Knox in Kentucky, and 25 microgrid projects scoped and planned through 2024, according to the strategy.

Oh, good, turning training commands and other bases into climate cult centers. How will this work when they actually have to deploy?

A rise in extreme weather events has already cost the department billions of dollars and will prompt more demand for U.S. troops while damaging military bases, degrading mission capabilities and putting service members at risk.

“Climate change threatens America’s security and is altering the geostrategic landscape as we know it,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement.

And they want to turn the military into a Bad Weather response team. We’re doomed.

Read: Good News: Army To Make Themselves Less Capable With Electric Vehicles »

Surprise: Natural Immunity To COVID Is Rather Real

Remember early on when people who had had COVID were thought to have created big resistance, even immunity, to the Chinese coronavirus, and, when coupled with those getting the just released vaccines, this would be a good thing? But, then, Brandon won the election, and Democrats, their pet media, and the Popular Medical Experts said everyone needed to get the vaccine, because natural immunity was bunk? That it was meaningless? That it didn’t really exist? That it didn’t matter? Take the damned vaccine, peons, and we might maybe possibly let you have your lives back. Or not.

Tweets and Facebooks posts were censored, as were videos on Youtube and other social media sites, or, at least, given a “disinformation” label. And now?

The future of the pandemic is looking clearer as we learn more about infection

surprise surprise surpriseDuring the early days of the pandemic, scientists and doctors were concerned that being infected with SARS-CoV-2 might not trigger a strong immune response in many people – thus an infection might not provide long-term protection.

“Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests,” a headline from The Guardian alerted back in July 2020. “King’s College London team found steep drops in patients’ antibody levels three months after infection,” the story warned.

But that idea was based on preliminary data from the laboratory — and on a faulty understanding of how the immune system works. Now about a year and a half later, better data is painting a more optimistic picture about immunity after a bout of COVID-19. In fact, a symptomatic infection triggers a remarkable immune response in the general population, likely offering protection against severe disease and death for a few years.

And if you’re vaccinated on top of it, your protection is likely even better, studies are consistently showing.

Here are several key questions people have been asking throughout the pandemic – and ones that researchers are beginning to answer.

So, natural immunity is rather real? Huh. Where are all the apologies from the Powers That Be?

With SARS-CoV-2, your immune system generates two types of protection: protection against reinfection and protection against severe illness upon that second infection. Let’s start with the latter.

If you’re under age 50 and healthy, then a bout of COVID-19 offers good protection against severe disease if you were to be infected again in a future surge, says epidemiologist Laith Abu-Raddad, at Weill-Cornell Medical-Qatar. “That’s really important because eventually, every one of us will get infected,” he says. “But if reinfections prove to be more mild, in general, it will allow us to live with this pandemic in a much easier way.” (snip)

These findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in December, are consistent with data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month. In that study, a prior infection reduced the risk of hospitalization during the delta surge by more than 50 times compared with in people who hadn’t had a prior infection and were not vaccinated. People who had had both a prior infection and were vaccinated had the most protection.

I wonder if the Usual Suspects will block the content from NPR, the study, and the CDC?

Read: Surprise: Natural Immunity To COVID Is Rather Real »

Good News: Solar Panels And Wind Turbines Can Bring World Peace!

Especially if we get them from China, right?

From the Daily Caller article

Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested that solar panels and wind farms could be the key to ensuring world peace in the future.

Solar, wind and other renewable sources would be key for the U.S. and its European allies to have energy security, Granholm said during her remarks at the U.S.-EU Energy Ministerial hosted by the State Department on Monday. The energy secretary added that fossil fuel dependence puts the West at greater risk of volatile energy prices.

“High energy prices have been putting strains on households on both sides of the Atlantic,” Granholm remarked. “In Europe, you have seen prices go through the roof. Of course, tensions between Russia and Ukraine pose threats to the energy security of the European Union, our friends and partners.”

“All of this underscores the benefits of clean energy,” she continued. “I was at a ministerial last week and my counterpart in Ireland, Minister Ryan, said words that I thought were very interesting. No country has been held hostage to access to the sun. No country has been hostage to the wind. This is not just an energy and climate issue, it is also potentially the greatest peace plan that ever existed.

So, she took a long fossil fueled flight to discuss this? Huh. In fairness, she’s not wrong, energy independence does mean there is no need to rely upon energy from nations like Russia, China, Middle East, Iran, Venezuela. We could do that right now by allow drilling for petroleum and natural gas here in the U.S., while working towards making “renewables” viable, reliable, and affordable, without the need to cover everywhere with solar panels and wind turbines. And, let’s not forget building next gen nuclear power plants.

However, not everything violence is about energy. The Islamic jihadis aren’t fighting due to energy. Russia is not really looking to invade Ukraine over energy.

As for high energy prices, well, the policies of the climate cult elites have done this.

Read: Good News: Solar Panels And Wind Turbines Can Bring World Peace! »

If All You See…

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

The blog of the day is Raised On Hoecakes, with a post on more school idiocy and misunderstanding student rights.

Read: If All You See… »

Progressives: Govt Shouldn’t Censor Misinformation, They Should “Mandate Evidentiary Standards”

Here we have “Julia Belluz, a health reporter at Vox and Dr. John Lavis, a professor at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Together, they worked on the Global Commission on Evidence to Address Societal Challenges.” In other words, people who don’t really do anything, they just like telling Other People how to live their lives, and the NY Times is happy to post their screed

Getting Rid of Joe Rogan Won’t Solve the Health Misinformation Problem

Another week, another platform in trouble for allowing its talent to give voice to misinformation. This time, Joe Rogan suggested that the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines are a type of “gene therapy” and that young people are at a greater risk from the shots than the disease, among other false and dubious health claims featured on his popular, Spotify-hosted podcast. The calls to remove his podcast have only intensified after revelations that he’s also repeatedly used a racist slur on the show, leading Spotify’s chief to apologize to the company’s employees.

The best outcome of the scandal wouldn’t be that Mr. Rogan was kicked off Spotify, at least not for the health bunk. It would be seeing his misleading Covid content in context: It’s just a tiny drop in the ocean of online health nonsense. (snip)

The problem is so much bigger than Joe Rogan or Spotify. And platforms, lawmakers and regulators aren’t keeping up.

Why should they, unless it is seriously putting people’s lives directly, immediately, at stake? Of course, in Liberal World, that “at stake” is capricious, transitional, spasmodic, always ever changing on a whim. They’re perfectly fine with the notion that Bush made/let happen 9/11, despite all the evidence against it. They were perfectly fine with things like Bush stole the 2000 election. That Trump stole the 2016 election due to Russia, which was debunked. That teaching people that it’s fine to believe you’re the opposite sex, despite the massive mental and physical health issues associated is just fine.

The piece even takes on lots of the crazy stuff at Amazon, from books to supplements to products. And crazy stuff at Netflix and Apple TV, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop crap and other “documentaries”.

It’s clear that misinformation harms human health, stokes panic, wastes money and leads people to miss opportunities to pursue options that could have helped. But the new fire hose of bunk is also harming us in less obvious ways. It’s hitting our fractured societies — and, we believe, contributing to further polarization.

It’s a free society, chumps, something we know you don’t like. Now do transgenders taking away opportunities from real women, harming their lives. Teaching kindergarteners about anal sex. Those are real issues.

…Instead, we need to prevent false or misleading health claims from reaching millions of people in the first place.

Doing this won’t be easy. It will require a mix of strategies, tailored to different platforms and groups. E-commerce sites like Amazon could introduce content warnings or adjust their pricing and ranking algorithms for health products and books that have been flagged for misinformation. Governments could also step in and mandate evidentiary standards for a broader range of health statements than the pharmaceutical and food claims they currently regulate.

See? It’s not censorship. How about mandating evidentiary standards for everything done during COVID, rather than simply watching government freak and just slap restrictions on?

https://twitter.com/StillCrankyAF/status/1490740410561536001

Many Blue states are looking to remove mask mandates for some reason. Oh, and

Suddenly Dems want to consider natural immunity, after blowing it off since Biden took office and was pushing the vaccines, which, if you remember, were supposed to stop people from having and spreading COVID at the high 90% range. What do the vaccines do now?

We also need approaches that would have an impact across the web, like raising the stakes for health professionals who, as two health care experts fighting disinformation wrote, are “weaponizing their white coats” to mislead the public. Right now, state medical regulatory bodies focus on individual patient encounters, not the role doctors might play as healers for the masses. The American Medical Association has commented occasionally on public-facing physicians, yet while doctor disinformation has only worsened in the pandemicfew physicians have been reprimanded by their state boards.

And go after doctors engaged in Wrongthink. Which is basically whatever the Progressives are against.

Read: Progressives: Govt Shouldn’t Censor Misinformation, They Should “Mandate Evidentiary Standards” »

Queen Pelosi Sure Loves To Take Lots Of Fossil Fueled Private Jet Trips

She’d be very happy to pass lots of climate crisis (scam) legislation that would restrict your use of fossil fuels, though

Pelosi spent over $500K on private jets despite claiming ‘we have a moral obligation’ to reduce emissions

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spent over $500,000 on private jets since 2020 despite repeatedly describing climate change as an “existential” threat the U.S. has a “moral” obligation to address.

According to campaign filings with the Federal Election Commission, Pelosi’s campaign paid a Virginia-based private aviation provider, Advanced Aviation Team, over $437,000 between October 2020 and December 2021 and over $65,000 to Clay Lacy Aviation, a California-based private jet provider.

Private jets are notoriously bad for the environment, producing significantly more emissions per passenger than commercial flights. Pelosi’s campaign spent $67,605 on private air travel just months before she said she viewed tackling the climate crisis as a “religious thing.”

“For me, it’s a religious thing,” she said in November after leading a 21-member congressional delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. “I believe this is God’s creation, and we have a moral obligation to be good stewards.”

By me and we, she means you, not her. You’re surely not surprise by this, I’d hazard to guess. I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis act like it’s a crisis in their own lives.

Read: Queen Pelosi Sure Loves To Take Lots Of Fossil Fueled Private Jet Trips »

Canadian Court Ignores Constitution, Shuts Down Truck Horns

See, in Canada they have this thing called the Declaration of Rights, which provides for peaceful protest and petitioning for redress of grievance, just like here. But, the Powers That Be couldn’t care less about the rights of the plebes if they get in the way

Canada court silences protesters’ horns, police seize fuel

Police in Canada’s national capital said on Monday they have seized thousands of liters of fuel and removed an oil tanker as part of a crackdown to end days long protest against the government’s COVID-19 measures, while a judge granted an interim injunction against deafening honking that has irked residents.

Canada’s capital Ottawa has been gridlocked by a so-called “Freedom Convoy” consisting of truckers and other motorists for 11 days now. What started as a movement opposing a Canadian vaccine mandate for cross-border drivers – a requirement mirrored by a U.S. rule – has morphed into a rallying point against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’ public health measures.

Trudeau, who appeared on Monday for the first time in nearly a week after being infected by COVID, said the protest has to stop. Responding to an emergency debate in the parliament, Trudeau denounced the tactics used by demonstrators. (snip)

The protests, which last week included some Confederate and Nazi flags, have been largely peaceful but an ear-splitting horn blaring by the protesters had become a nuisance. On Monday, a Canadian judge granted an interim injunction preventing people from sounding horns in downtown Ottawa.

The 10-day injunction is part of a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of downtown Ottawa residents, some of whom have said they feel unsafe in their own neighbourhood.

You can bet those flags came from false flags to make the truckers look bad. Perhaps in the future the truckers should just burn stores down, that seems to be just fine. This, again, causes problems with the people in power keeping power. We either stand up for the rights of people we despise, we disagree with, or we do not believe in them at all.

Meanwhile, the Hill trots out a piece which says “individual choices are nice, but, not when they Affect The Whole”

Freedom of choice is a long-held value for Americans, who don’t like to be told what to do. Of interest, our Founding Fathers drew up the Declaration of Independence during the period of Enlightenment, the intellectual movement stressing liberty, science and human progress. Philosophers at the time influenced the acceptance of the social contract — to create a stable society, individuals would give up some personal rights to benefit the group. Today, for example, we agree with the law that says we will not drive while intoxicated —  protecting not only the individual but also others who might be victims of an accident.

The decision against vaccination places an individual at substantial risk of infection and complications. Unfortunately, with a highly transmissible virus, it also places the individual’s family, friends and neighbors at risk. So the exercise of personal freedom creates an unfreedom among those exposed to the infected person. The only way a personal choice is linked only to the individual is if that person isolates herself from society. For example, a family could argue that their child will not wear a mask but would elect to have homeschooling and quarantine.

So, the State needs to take those choices away and force people to Comply.

Read: Canadian Court Ignores Constitution, Shuts Down Truck Horns »

NY Times: Climate Cult Is A Mental Disorder

Obviously, that’s not what they mean, but, it really is what it equates to

Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room
Ten years ago, psychologists proposed that a wide range of people would suffer anxiety and grief over climate. Skepticism about that idea is gone.

It would hit Alina Black in the snack aisle at Trader Joe’s, a wave of guilt and shame that made her skin crawl.

Something as simple as nuts. They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children.

She longed, really longed, to make less of a mark on the earth. But she had also had a baby in diapers, and a full-time job, and a 5-year-old who wanted snacks. At the age of 37, these conflicting forces were slowly closing on her, like a set of jaws.

In the early-morning hours, after nursing the baby, she would slip down a rabbit hole, scrolling through news reports of droughts, fires, mass extinction. Then she would stare into the dark.

It was for this reason that, around six months ago, she searched “climate anxiety” and pulled up the name of Thomas J. Doherty, a Portland psychologist who specializes in climate.

A decade ago, Dr. Doherty and a colleague, Susan Clayton, a professor of psychology at the College of Wooster, published a paper proposing a new idea. They argued that climate change would have a powerful psychological impact — not just on the people bearing the brunt of it, but on people following it through news and research. At the time, the notion was seen as speculative.

That skepticism is fading. Eco-anxiety, a concept introduced by young activists, has entered a mainstream vocabulary. And professional organizations are hurrying to catch up, exploring approaches to treating anxiety that is both existential and, many would argue, rational.

Why, yes, they really are crazy. The Elites, the media, the activists, etc, push the doom and gloom, which makes the average climate cultists fearful, anxious, unhinged, and so forth, and then they need therapy to reinforce their climate crazy.

Though there is little empirical data on effective treatments, the field is expanding swiftly. The Climate Psychology Alliance provides an online directory of climate-aware therapists; the Good Grief Network, a peer support network modeled on 12-step addiction programs, has spawned more than 50 groups; professional certification programs in climate psychology have begun to appear.

They’re addicted to doom.

She understands how privileged she is; she describes her anxiety as a “luxury problem.” But still: The plastic toys in the bathtub made her anxious. The disposable diapers made her anxious. She began to ask herself, what is the relationship between the diapers and the wildfires?

“I feel like I have developed a phobia to my way of life,” she said.

Good grief. This cultish belief set is not good for their mental health. There needs to be an intervention with deprogramming.

Read: NY Times: Climate Cult Is A Mental Disorder »

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