Oh Noes, Tariffs Could Skyrocket The Cost Of Italian Made Pasta

By William Teach November 13, 2025 – 7:00 am

It’s horrible!

Since the WSJ has a pretty hard paywall, let’s go to the NY Post

Thirteen Italian pasta brands could pull their products from US grocery stores — or potentially be forced to hike prices dramatically as soon as January, when punishing 107% tariffs are set to take effect.

The levies — the highest the White House has moved to impose on a specific product since the start of President Trump’s crackdown on imports — come from the US’ 15% baseline tariff on European Union goods plus a punishing 92% levy over accusations that Italian pasta makers have been undercutting US competitors.

The Commerce Department says the penne purveyors have been violating “antidumping” laws, exporting their products to the US market at a very low price to gain an advantage over local businesses.

One affected company decried the new policy to The Post, declaring it would not pass on costs from the new tariff to customers. (big snip)

Last year, the Department of Agriculture launched an investigation after two US pasta manufacturers called for a review of Italian exporters.

So, this all started under Biden. Huh.

Along with Pasta Garofalo, La Molisana and Rummo, the impacted pasta brands include Agritalia, Aldino, Antiche Tradizioni Di Gragnano, Barilla, Gruppo Milo, Pastificio Artigiano Cav. Giuseppe Cocco, Pastificio Chiavenna, Pastificio Liguori, Pastificio Sgambaro and Pastificio Tamma.

Barilla makes pasta for the US market within the States and is less likely to be impacted by the tariffs than the other businesses, Italian media noted. The Post has sought comment from Barilla.

Barilla accounts for around 30% of US pasta sales, made in Ames, IA and Avon, NY for both US and Canadian sales. I usually buy Barilla or some off brands, like at Lidl. And, I will make my own when it comes to thin spaghetti and similar, as well as some thicker noodles, at times. Weird shapes and egg noodles, nah, always buying. Most people are not buying Italian import pasta. So, chill out, News Media.

Read: Oh Noes, Tariffs Could Skyrocket The Cost Of Italian Made Pasta »

Posted in Food and Drink, Wonky Media | 10 Comments | Trackback URL

ABC News Helpfully Explains How Cultists Can Alleviate Their Climate Anxiety

By William Teach November 12, 2025 – 3:43 pm

Me, I’d suggest visiting a fully accredited mental health professional who can deprogram the Warmists. Let’s see what ABC has to say

Climate change is in the news during COP30. We’ve got tips to tackle your climate anxiety

Every autumn, news feeds get flooded with stories about climate change. That’s because around this time each year, global leaders gather to discuss collective efforts to limit our emissions of planet-warming gases, released primarily from oil, gas and coal.

Some of the information coming out of the COP30 conference is bleak. But it’s not just COP. Climate stories can be difficult to consume year-round, whether it’s about natural disasters, victims of heat waves or sea level rise or new studies about global warming impacts.

“When you throw a ton of scary facts and information at people, their nervous system shuts down. It’s a coping mechanism,” said Sarah Newman, founder and executive director of the Climate Mental Health Network.

Like this?

How Climate Change Can Lead to Earthquakes

Climate change does its damage in a lot of ways—birthing hurricanes, heat waves, floods, droughts, and wildfires. Now add to that list earthquakes, continental rifting—or breakup—and magma production. That’s the conclusion of a new paper in Scientific Reports, which adds to a growing agreement among scientists that the Earth’s atmospheric processes can affect its geological processes in surprising ways.

Those things never happened before fossil fuels, you know. Anyhow, there’s lots of wackadoodle in the ABC piece, getting to

Newman said that one of the most effective ways to combat climate anxiety is to find other people who are experiencing it too, and to talk about it.

Every year, New York City hosts something called Climate Week. Folks from all over descend upon Manhattan for hundreds of events and panels on energy, the environment and climate change.

Between 15 and 20 people showed up to one event about finding connection and hope in the face of climate change. It was intimate, but so is confiding feelings of dread and isolation with a room full of strangers.

“How many of you wake up in the morning with feelings of despair or hopelessness?” asked the leader at the front of the room.

Just about every hand sheepishly went up.

Maybe it’s not the best idea to be associating with people who reinforce your cultish beliefs. You wouldn’t look for other alcoholics who are still drinking to help you stop drinking, right?

Immediate grounding exercises include the 3-3-3 technique, where you name three things you see, three you hear and three parts of your body that you can move. Another one is the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, where you identify five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste.

Prozac would probably work better for these nuts.

That starts with something Doherty calls ceremonial actions. They don’t meaningfully change the world, but they’re easy, they can be repeated, they align with a person’s values and make them feel better, like picking up litter or bringing reusable bags to the grocery store.

Then those ceremonial actions fuel the desire and resilience needed for something larger, like getting rid of the gas appliances in the house, which could take years to afford and invest in. The U.N. lists 10 actions to reduce a person’s impact on the planet.

How about giving up all use of fossil fueled vehicles in their own lives?

Read: ABC News Helpfully Explains How Cultists Can Alleviate Their Climate Anxiety »

Posted in Climate Cult, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach November 12, 2025 – 1:02 pm

…is a horrible weapon of war due to climate crisis strife, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Climate Depot, with a post on raw sewage and a lack of water in Belem, Brazil, where COP30 is being held.

Read: If All You See… »

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

Too Bad: Obamacare Could Collapse Under Trump’s Plan

By William Teach November 12, 2025 – 10:30 am

It would be a terrible thing giving money directly to those on Ocare instead of the insurance companies, right?

Obamacare could collapse under Trump’s new plan, policy experts say

Republicans are putting their own spin on subsidizing Americans’ health care: Route money away from insurers and put cash directly in consumers’ hands to give them more choice over their coverage.

Economists and policy experts suspect President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers are presenting this alternative to extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies because they want to undermine or even replace Obamacare — something the party has repeatedly failed to do in the past.

Ocare is probably not going away. How many big federal programs ever go away? But, can it be changed into something that actually works for the citizens? Something that makes sense?

With direct cash payments from the federal government into special accounts, “healthy people could get much cheaper insurance that has medical underwriting and doesn’t cover preexisting conditions, but that would leave much sicker people in the ACA pool, and likely send it into a death spiral,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a nonpartisan research organization.

If younger, healthier consumers choose such so-called junk health plans — with lower costs and less robust coverage — or don’t use the money for health insurance, it could throw off the balance of risk and prompt insurers to exit the market entirely, Levitt and others said.

Republican proposals for the direct payments still lack key details. They include creating health savings accounts or flexible spending accounts for millions of Americans and depositing cash into them instead of providing the enhanced premium subsidy that goes directly to health insurers.

How many in the existing pools are sick, and how many are just getting insurance because they are required to by law? What if this plan ends with the insurance companies lowering premiums and deductibles? Don’t forget, one of the original complaints about Ocare plans was that deductibles made the insurance unusable. We knew this back in 2013.

Democrats appear unlikely to buy in.

“We are not going to come up with that deal during open enrollment,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “Right now, the only option is to extend the subsidies for a year.”

How about putting language in a subsidy extension, with the GOP plan kicking in prior to the next enrollment year?

Providing health insurance subsidies, like the enhanced Obamacare tax credits, meanwhile, can have an upward impact on health care price inflation, because people are more likely to seek out medical care if they’re insured, they said.

But the Republican plans, depending on how they’re designed, could prompt fewer people to enroll in ACA marketplace coverage.

What if Ocare was changed so that the insurers could offer bare-bones plans via the exchange, ones with lower premiums and deductibles, higher copays because lots of the healthies rarely use the plans, ones that fit the people signing up? This can actually help reduce costs in the non-Ocare market.

But former Trump adviser Brian Blase, now president of the influential right-leaning think tank Paragon Health Institute, argues that some plans to divert funds from insurers and into Americans’ pocketbooks would have little to no impact on Obamacare enrollment.

Paragon wants Republicans to let the enhanced ACA subsidies expire and has been promoting a new health care plan that would allow some lower-income Obamacare enrollees to take a portion of the government cost-sharing subsidies that go to health insurers and instead use them as health savings account deposits.

It’s funny, because people thought Ocare was meant to put health insurers out of business originally, which would require the government to be the insurer. To get to single payer. Who knew that it would end up being a way to reward those companies and make them reliable Democrat donors.

Read: Too Bad: Obamacare Could Collapse Under Trump’s Plan »

Posted in Current Affairs, Healthcare | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

National Geographic: Lake Effect Snowfall Is Your Fault

By William Teach November 12, 2025 – 7:15 am

So, snow fell from Michigan to Vermont and up to Canada Monday. NJ got it, Western NC, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Toronto

It was also still coming down in NY, Vermont, and Canada Tuesday, even into Tuesday night. So, of course

What is lake-effect snow? Here’s how climate change is altering it

Winter weather is ransacking the Chicago metro area and parts of Indiana as the region experiences one of winter’s most brutal weather phenomena: lake-effect snow. Heavy snow covered the area Sunday night into Monday morning, with more than a foot of snow recorded by mid-Monday.

Lake-effect snow forms when warm, unfrozen lake water and cold air meet. Some of the lake water evaporates into the air, making it warmer and wetter. Once that air moves inland, that moisture cools and turns into snow.

If the wind is blowing over large portions of one of the Great Lakes, the storm system will take in more water. The greater the temperature difference between the winds and water, the more moisture is absorbed into the atmosphere.

This type of snow storm is most common in the Great Lakes region because of their large size and location near populous cities.

So, it’s normal. It’s been as normal as normal as long as people were in the area.

But as the planet warms, will we continue to see major Midwestern snow storms? Here’s the science behind this phenomena and how climate change could make these storms more intense in the short term.

You’re welcome to read the article, but, it’s the same old same old cult propaganda, where you driving a fossil fueled vehicle and making the world burn causes lots of snow.

Read: National Geographic: Lake Effect Snowfall Is Your Fault »

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

ICE Arrests Murderous Moldovan Illegal, Biden Let Her Stay

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

I guess Let’s Go Brandon just couldn’t be bothered to let federal authorities do their job. And wouldn’t let them

ICE arrests Moldovan illegal immigrant and convicted killer who tortured, threw victim out ninth-floor window

Biden Brain SuckerThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced the arrest of a Moldovan illegal immigrant and convicted killer who tortured and threw a victim out of a ninth-floor window.

Victoria Sorocean was taken into custody in Los Angeles on Nov. 4 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after authorities learned she had been convicted of premeditated murder with exceptional cruelty in 2013, ICE told Fox News on Tuesday.

According to DHS, Sorocean and an accomplice tortured their victim inside an apartment in Chisinau, Moldova, beating the person with a stick and electrical cable before throwing the victim out a ninth-floor window.

She was sentenced to 17 years in prison but fled the country to avoid serving her sentence.

Sorocean was first arrested by ICE on Jan. 10, 2020, under the first Trump administration, but she later filed multiple legal appeals and asylum claims to delay removal, DHS said.

How in the f**k does the system allow someone convicted of murder in another country to stay in the US? Sure, there is no bilateral extradition with Moldova, however, Moldova did ask for her back. No one with a murder conviction like this is eligible for asylum. Anyhow, can you guess what happened next?

Officials said she was ultimately released back into the U.S. in 2022 under the Biden administration.

They let a hardcore, torturous murderer loose in the U.S.

DHS said the case highlights the failures of the previous administration, which it said allowed millions of illegal aliens, including violent criminals and murderers like Sorocean, to roam free in American neighborhoods.

“It shocks the conscience that the Biden administration released into America a cruel, violent illegal alien who tortured a human being, beat them with an electrical cable and a stick and then threw her victim from a ninth-floor window,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

The thing is, I’m not shocked about this at all. Which is rather sad. Who knew that Biden’s insanity would just keep messing with America.

Read: ICE Arrests Murderous Moldovan Illegal, Biden Let Her Stay »

Posted in Illegal Immigration, Joe Biden | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Warmist Gavin Newsom Takes Long Fossil Fueled Trip To COP30

By William Teach November 11, 2025 – 2:54 pm

Climahypocrisy matters, with a side portion of TDS

During COP30, Governor Newsom highlights subnational climate action as the defining economic opportunity of the 21st Century, while Trump sleeps

Today, Governor Gavin Newsom kicked off his official trip in Brazil by engaging in discussions on climate, emphasizing that climate action is one of the greatest economic opportunities of this century. In a fireside chat at the Milken Institute Global Investors’ Symposium with CEO Rich Ditizio, the Governor urged the world’s top financial and business leaders to look to California as proof that investments in clean energy and innovation are a win-win-win for economic growth, communities, and the health of the planet.

After the discussion, the Governor convened a roundtable in partnership with the Milken Institute and with support from Amcham Brasil. Leading climate investors and private-sector partners joined to deepen partnerships on clean energy, sustainable manufacturing, and economic growth in California and across the Americas.

While Donald Trump is handing the future to China, California is proving that climate action, business growth, supporting workers, and good-paying jobs go hand in hand. We’re not turning backwards to the failed policies of the past — California is fighting for a clean-energy future, even as President Trump bends the knee to his Gulf State patrons and takes a nap as the world burns.

This is a governor who is forcing Comrades in the People’s Republik Of California into EVs. Or buses. Bikes. Increasing consumer prices by requiring EV trucks and “green” energy. Suing fossil fuels companies. All while

And, don’t forget taking a fossil fueled vehicle from the airport to the COP30 conference center down a road created by cutting down lots and lots of trees, along with 40,000 other Warmists.

More crazy below the fold

Read More »

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Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach November 11, 2025 – 1:48 pm

…is early snow due to Other People driving fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is MOTUS A.D., with a post on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Read: If All You See… »

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

Senate Votes To End Shutdown, NY Times Apoplectic Over Trump’s Action

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

First

Senate Passes Funding Bill to End Schumer Shutdown

The Senate passed a continuing resolution (CR) to reopen the government Monday night, 40 days after Democrats triggered what is now the longest government shutdown in history.

The vote ends a disastrous shutdown for Democrats, but the civil war for the soul and direction of the party is just beginning.

The vote was 60-40. Only a majority was necessary.

Senators reached a time agreement Monday evening to bypass Senate procedures that would have prolonged the passage of the bill by as long as several days.

And, really, it next goes to the House, which will pass it along party lines, get reconciled, then go to Trump’s desk

As shutdown ends, furious Democrats eat their own

The Schumer Shutdown appears to be ending. It’s about time. By refusing to vote for a “clean” continuing resolution which would have kept government spending at levels they themselves approved earlier, Democrats have held the country hostage for a record-breaking 41 days. They have hurt Americans, angered their union allies and dampened consumer sentiment. For what?

What did Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democratic colleagues gain from throwing hundreds of thousands out of work, endangering American air travelers, causing great hardship and anxiety for those dependent on SNAP benefits, and slowing the growth of the U.S. economy?

Nothing. They did not win an extension of Obamacare premium subsidies, they did not undo the Medicaid reforms that they fought tooth and nail and – worst of all for Schumer – the shutdown in no way endeared him to the democratic socialists who are tearing his party in two. Far from it.

Well, they did get their Humpty Dumpty base out for the elections, but, then, in most cases the Democrat would have won most likely.

For Trump, Nothing Was Off Limits During the Shutdown

The government shutdown is already the longest in American history. But it’s also perhaps the most punishing — in part because President Trump has taken actions no previous administration ever took during a shutdown.

Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration cut food stamps for millions of low-income Americans. It tried to fire thousands of government workers and withhold back pay from others, while freezing or canceling money for projects in Democratic-led states.

It remains to be seen whether there will be a political price to pay for Mr. Trump or his party, with polls showing that voters generally blamed Republicans more for the shutdown. But for now, the tactics appear to have worked, after a group of Democrats agreed to support a bill to end the shutdown and drop the concessions their party had demanded.

“Standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work,” said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, said on MSNBC Monday. “It actually gave him more power.”

The bare-knuckle politics the Trump administration employed during the shutdown — often coming from his budget director Russell T. Vought, whom Mr. Trump refers to as Darth Vader — became too brutal for the handful of centrist Senate Democrats, who never liked the idea of the shutdown much anyway.

Democrats are used to the GOP collapsing in the face of the withering media assault. Trump don’t care. He doesn’t care about the Credentialed Media and their insane bias. He revels in it, and that puts some backbone in the elected Republicans. Perhaps the NY Times forgot what happened during the 17 day Obama shutdown in 2013 (below the fold)

Read More »

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Strange: Democrats’ Yammering About Climate Doom Drops

By William Teach November 11, 2025 – 7:15 am

It does seem like they’re trying to rebrand the cult

The big issue Democrats have stopped talking about

The Democrats who prevailed in electoral races earlier this week were no exception. Abigail Spanberger, who became the first woman elected governor of Virginia, rarely mentioned climate change on the campaign trail — instead focusing her attention on the rising cost of living and education. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic governor-elect of New Jersey, largely focused on climate change in the context of resilience against disasters in the coastal state. And Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist winner of the New York City mayoral election, focused intently on rising rents and grocery bills, only discussing climate change when directly asked about it.

According to Adam Jentleson, a veteran Democratic operative and the founder and president of the Searchlight Institute, Democrats are learning that direct focus and messaging on climate change doesn’t necessarily pay off. (In September, the Searchlight Institute urged Democrats to obey “the first rule about solving climate change: Don’t say climate change.”) Democratic voters care about climate change, he argued — but not enough to vote primarily on that issue.

According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans are concerned about global warming — but the issue ranks lowest in concern among all environmental issues polled, below extinction of plant and animal species, polluted drinking water, and the loss of tropical rainforests.

It also tends to be at the bottom when compared to real issues, hence, it is not a big issue.

“Climate change has fallen into the ‘friend zone’ of voting,” Jentleson said. “And as in life, when you’ve fallen in the friend zone, it’s really hard to get out of it.”

Let’s be honest, when 99% of people go to the polls ‘climate change’ is barely considered. Perhaps if Democrats weren’t completely in the tank with Trump Derangement Syndrome they could focus on the scam, or anything else.

Instead, Democrats are talking about increased electricity and energy prices — blaming President Donald Trump’s partial repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act and harsh crackdowns on wind and solar power. Sherrill promised to freeze utility rates in New Jersey and declare a “state of emergency” on electricity prices. Spanberger promised to force data centers to pay their fair share of electricity before plugging into the grid.

“The climate movement in the past has gotten a lot of flak for being too lofty and abstract,” said Holly Burke, vice president of communications at Evergreen Action, a climate advocacy group. “I see the pivot to affordability not as a shift away from climate, but as a shift to meeting people where they’re at. We’re in a national cost-of-living crisis right now.”

Should be fun when energy prices in NJ skyrocket to go with scarcity. But, notice that Dems are trying to shift to “affordability”, which will have the same results: more unaffordable, unreliable energy, higher prices, forcing people into EVs, onto buses and trains and bikes, limiting what citizens can do and purchase.

It’s not just Democrats. Republicans are also talking less about climate, The Post’s analysis found, and so is the media. According to a project by the University of Colorado and a suite of other universities, global media coverage of climate change has been declining since 2021. In October 2021, news coverage of the issue peaked, with about 1,100 articles per month across newspapers in Africa, North America, Europe, and Asia. In September 2025, the number had fallen to about 400. In the United States, coverage fell by almost two-thirds during that same period.

When real world issues interfere, like wars in Ukraine and Israel, no one cares about theoretical issues. And what you see is the same article repeated all over. This article is actually a Washington Post article repeated all over. Don’t expect the cult to give up, though. That ain’t happening.

Read: Strange: Democrats’ Yammering About Climate Doom Drops »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 24 Comments | Trackback URL
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