…is armor needed for societal breakdown and violence from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Blazing Cat Fur, with a post on kids as young as 8 picking coffee for Starbucks.
It’s redheads week!
Read: If All You See… »
Happy Sunday! Another fantastic day in America. The sky is blue, the Sun is shining, and it’s a whole new month. This pinup is by Gil Elvgren, with a wee bit of help.
What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15
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.
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?
Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »
We’ve finally hit the point where one of the biggest news outlets in the world has their editorial board making the link
Here Comes the Coronavirus Pandemic
Back in 2002, when the SARS virus made its fateful leap from bats to civet cats to humans, global health experts warned that the ensuing outbreak was a harbinger of things to come: Climate change and globalization were conspiring with an array of other forces to make it much easier for old animal diseases to morph into new human ones. It was only a matter of time before one of those diseases proved truly catastrophic. The world could avert the worst consequences if it started planning.
Getting beyond the insanity of linking ‘climate change’ when it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, including China, the NY Times editorial board typically comes out for porous, if not open, borders, as well as taking in every refugee who wants in. Heck, for taking them whether they want to come or not.
In the meantime, this much is not in dispute: SARS-CoV-2 spreads easily — more easily than SARS or seasonal flu — and is tough to detect. It’s the kind of virus that would be extremely difficult to contain even in a best-case scenario, and the world is hardly in a best-case scenario now. Rising nationalism, waning trust and lingering trade wars have undermined cooperation between global superpowers. Rampant misinformation and growing skepticism of science are imperiling public understanding of the crisis and governments’ response to it.
Refer back to Picard. The media makes fun of Trump, or gets in high dudgeon, over him blasting them and Democrats for politicizing Coronavirus, and then they prove Trump right.
Anyhow, the piece meanders around, and includes several points about how dangerous it is, including
Here we are again. In December, another new virus — SARS-CoV-2 — made the leap from animals to humans. It has now infected more than 83,000 people across more than 50 countries. Nearly 3,000 people have died, most of them in China where the outbreak began. Global health experts are once again sounding the alarm. It’s unclear how bad things might get this time around. Covid-19, the disease caused by this new virus, appears to be between seven and 20 times more deadly than seasonal flu, which on average kills between 300,000 and 650,000 people globally each year. But that fatality rate could prove to be much lower, especially if it turns out that many milder cases have evaded detection.
Here’s also the NY Times in the straight news section
On average, seasonal flu strains kill about 0.1 percent of people who become infected. The 1918 flu had an unusually high fatality rate, around 2 percent. Because it was so contagious, that flu killed tens of millions of people.
Early estimates of the coronavirus death rate from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, have been around 2 percent. But a new report on 1,099 cases from many parts of China, published on Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine, finds a lower rate: 1.4 percent.
The coronavirus death rate may be even lower, if — as most experts suspect — there are many mild or symptom-free cases that have not been detected.
Slate notes
Here’s why it would be: Most public health officials now feel that widespread infection outside of the current hot zones like China and South Korea is no longer a matter of if but when. Containing the virus is likely impossible. So the next question is: Just how bad will the cases here be? In China, the death rate has been reported as zero in children under 10 and very low, 0.2 percent, in healthy adults. Unfortunately, the rate is far higher, as high as 14.8 percent, in the sick and elderly (though as is always the case in outbreaks like this, it is hard to know how many of these older and often chronically ill hospitalized patients died with COVID-19, not of COVID-19). The reported overall death rate of 2 percent is essentially a weighted average of these numbers.
This is why most health professionals are recommending that you wash your hands well and don’t touch your eyes and mouth. The US Surgeon General, Jerome M Adams, and the CDC recommend that, and to stop buying masks unless you are already sick. Doctor Adams was rather upset over the purchase of all these masks. And, really, if you’re sick, stay home. Of course, the Washington Post has to fear-monger with a story about the millions killed during the 1918 outbreak. And of course whining about Trump. Notice above, the mortality rate is estimated to be lower, and could seriously be not much above the standard flu. People are much healthier and have better access to health care now than 1918.
Anyhow, ‘climate change’ and globalism. Don’t leftists love globalism?
Read: Peak Coronavirus: NY Times Links It To ‘Climate Change’ And Globalism »
You know, these graduate students could have taken jobs elsewhere than the university. Heck, they could have gotten outside jobs and earned. But, no, they Demanded the college take care of them. While not working
UC Santa Cruz fires 54 graduate students participating in months-long strike
The University of California, Santa Cruz, issued termination letters on Friday to 54 graduate students who have been waging a months-long strike for a cost-of-living-adjustment amid soaring rents.
The firings came as graduate students at the University of California, Davis, and University of California, Santa Barbara, began their own cost-of-living strikes in solidarity. One of their demands is that all UC Santa Cruz graduate workers who participated in strike activities be restored to full employment status.
The 54 UC Santa Cruz graduate students who received termination letters on Friday are just a fraction of the 233 graduate student instructors and teaching assistants who have refused to submit nearly 12,000 grades from the fall quarter since December.
This month, the students’ grading strike expanded, as teaching assistants refused all teaching duties and research assistants refused additional work. Some classes and office hours have been canceled because of the strike.
The students are striking for a $1,412-a-month cost-of-living adjustment, which they say they desperately need amid a growing housing crisis in California. Most students are spending between 5o% and 70% of their $2,434-a-month salary on rent, some forced to live in substandard apartments with many roommates in order to stretch their dollars.
Now, try this at your job: refuse to work while demanding more money. What happens? You’re promoted to customer, right?
The graduate students are represented by United Auto Workers Local 2865, which negotiated a contract in 2018 that included a no-strike clause: meaning the current strike, known as a “wildcat strikeâ€, has been taken without the union’s approval.
Huh what? Auto workers union?
“Teaching assistants who choose to withhold grades or refuse to teach are in violation of that contract,†Gordon said, adding that such actions “unfairly impact undergraduate students while doing nothing to further the conversation on how to address the challenges of the rising cost of living, with which all students and employees across UC must contendâ€.
Have fun trying to get jobs with other colleges after this. And, won’t look good when they try for private sector jobs. Don’t like the pay? Go elsewhere. Don’t like conditions? Go elsewhere. It is fun to see these uber-Progressive colleges crack down, eh?
Read: Super-Progressive UC Santa Cruz Terminates Graduate Students Demanding More Money »
…is an evil world killing fossil fueled vehicle, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is hogewash, with a post on a galaxy shattering kaboom.
Read: If All You See… »
No, not that tax, the carbon tax one, this one
Opinion: Fix U.S. tax code to address climate change and our health
The climate crisis is here. It is real and it is hurting our health.
As physicians in Northern California, my colleagues and I see how climate change is making our patients sicker every day. We see infants and children with worsening asthma due to wildfire smoke exposure. We see adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease requiring stronger and more toxic medication due to worsening air pollution caused by gas-powered cars.
Would these be the fires caused not by “carbon pollution”, but firebugs and accidents? And, yes, gas powered cars do release air pollution, but, CO2 is not pollution. And, cars are cleaner than ever. Strange that Warmists won’t give up their own fossil fueled vehicles, though, eh?
But 2019 ended with a climate whimper as Congress missed the opportunity to make a more meaningful impact on climate change than it has in the last decade by updating and extending the tax code to promote clean energy. A package of clean-energy incentives, including for energy storage, solar, offshore wind power and electric vehicles, failed to make it into Congress’s year-end government spending deal due to White House pressure.
If these things had massive potential, private companies would be dumping massive amounts of money in them, looking to make more money. Why does it always have to be Government with these Stateists? Why is it always Someone Else’s money?
Right now, our tax code strongly favors the creation of new fossil fuel projects. Large-scale clean-energy projects are possible and cost-effective. But we need to level the tax code, and hence the playing field, for clean-energy projects that rely on wind, solar and complementary energy storage to get off the ground so that we, especially our children, can be healthy.
What Dr. Amanda Millstein means by leveling the tax code is giving these things extra breaks than everything else.
The climate crisis is here and we no longer have the luxury of time. Congress needs to hear from us, as many of us as possible — Democrats, Republicans, young, old, West Coast, East Coast, farmer, businessperson, rich, poor. Our voices matter. And nothing is more important than our health.
What of the voices of those of us who do not believe in the climate crisis? Do we get a say?
Dr. Millstein should lobby the city councils in the San Francisco area, where she lives, to ban all fossil fueled vehicles. Let’s see how that goes.
Then there’s this tax in a letter to the editor of the LA Times
Planting 1 trillion trees and oil companies promising to be net-zero emitters of greenhouse gases will not be enough to fight climate change, as your editorial says. There must be a worldwide cutback on consumption.
This can partially be achieved by individual and corporate conservation, but ultimately global population stabilization is the answer.
A family with two children will have stable consumption over time. A family with three will have more. There needs to be a total restructuring of the global economy concentrating on a stable population, not ever-expanding demand based on an ever-expanding population.
One way to do this is to phase out child tax deductions over time so they apply to no more than two kids. I know this sounds grim, but so is what the world faces.
I say we place a big tax on any person who expresses a belief that climate change is mostly/solely caused by mankind if they have any kids.
Read: Cult of Climastrology Wants To Change U.S. Tax Code To Solve Hotcoldwetdry »
St. Greta of Stockholm held a rally in Bristol, and was rather Upset
A child tells world leaders that they are behaving like children… maybe Greta should open her mind and listen to other adults https://t.co/0uYRhrsrLC
— Climate Alarmism (@ClimateAlarmism) February 29, 2020
It’s worth watching the video and reading the lines, because something is missing
(UK Guardian) Tens of thousands of people, many of them children skipping school, braved heavy rain to join a climate strike headed by Greta Thunberg in Bristol city centre.
The vast crowd fell silent as the 17-year-old activist told them governments were acting like children and so it fell to young people to be “the adults in the roomâ€.
Criticising governments and the media, she said: “Once again they sweep their mess under the rug for us – young people, their children – to clean up for them. We must continue and we have to be patient. Remember that the changes required will not happen overnight.â€
Wearing a yellow raincoat and woolly hat – a look copied by some of her devotees – she took to the stage to chants of “Greta, Greta†from schoolchildren and teenagers.
She told them: “We will not be silenced because we are the change, and change is coming whether you like it or not. This emergency is being completely ignored by the politicians, the media and those in power.
“Basically, nothing is being done to halt this crisis despite all the beautiful words and promises from our elected officials. So what did you do during this crucial time? I will not be silenced when the world is on fire.â€
I love the look of a heavy winter jacket and wool cap to ward off the cold while being told the world is on fire. Anyhow, for all St. Greta’s screeching, she failed to offer any solutions. For all her saying that governments are the children, she failed to offer any solutions. If all you’re doing is complaining without offering solutions, you are whining. And, seriously, this is her “plan” from last fall
That’s it. The totality of her plan. Because, like any other child, she demands that Other People do something. But, the rest of us will look back in 10 years, 20 years, and laugh about how hysterical (both ways) these Climate Cultists were, and perhaps Greta will get a degree in some discipline that makes sense.
Read: St. Greta: “World Leaders Are Acting Like Children” Or Something »
President’s Trump’s remain in Mexico policy rather makes sense: you want asylum? OK, we’ll process an application, but, you don’t have access to the whole of the lower 48 while applying. This has made Open Borders advocates upset
Court temporarily blocks Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, then suspends its own order
An federal appeals court has temporarily halted a major Trump administration policy to make asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. immigration courts.
A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Friday in a 2-1 vote to put on hold the policy that furthered President Donald Trump’s asylum crackdown.
The “Remain in Mexico†policy – known officially as “Migrant Protection Protocols†– took effect in January 2019 in San Diego and has spread across the border. Nearly 60,000 people have been sent back since the policy began.
The question before the judges was whether to let the policy take effect during legal challenges.
But, see, this wasn’t the only 9th Circuit ruling
Friday’s earlier decision, made after extensive written arguments and a hearing, found the Remain in Mexico program violated U.S. immigration law and a United Nations refugee convention, which bar the government from returning someone to a place where they would be persecuted.
So, they’re going by UN rules now? Further, I’m not sure what they’re seeing in federal immigration law, but, we don’t have to let people in willy nilly. However, the court did say that this only affects 4 southwestern states, not as a nationwide injunction.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said the decision highlighted “the consequences and impropriety of nationwide injunctions.â€
“The Trump administration has acted faithfully to implement a statutory authority provided by Congress over two decades ago and signed into law by President Clinton,†the spokesperson said. “The 9th Circuit’s decision not only ignores the constitutional authority of Congress and the administration for a policy in effect for over a year, but also extends relief beyond the parties before the court.â€
Open borders advocates will do anything to make the border porous. At the same time, they also had another ruling
(Breitbart) The same panel also declared that border agents must process claims for asylum made by migrants who are caught trying to sneak over the border fence far from the formal Ports of Entry.
That’s silly. Immigration law states that anyone caught attempting to enter the country/entered the country anywhere other than a designated port of entry is an illegal alien, and can be deported.
The two decisions — if accepted by a large panel of judges and by the Supreme Court — punch a nationwide hole through the border rules. The decisions will help the cartels, coyotes, and worldwide migrants to again cooperatively overwhelm U.S. border defenses and courtroom process and rush millions of migrants into U.S. job markets, housing markets, and K-12 schools.
Perfect timing, right as Coronavirus is raging, and even the NY Times says that quarantines and restrictive measures are the best idea. Shutting down the border is a good idea.
Read: 9th Circuit Sorta Blocks Trump’s Remain In Mexico Policy »
Funny, the Warmists didn’t complain when Osama Bin Laden was yammering about his worry about ‘climate change’. Or how Islamic extremist groups are trying to co-opt the Hotcoldwetdry movement. Or how extremist nations like Iran are pushing ‘climate change’. Nope, a tiny few “far right” extremist groups (who like government authoritarianism) are joining in
As an environmental journalist, I’ve been covering the frightening acceleration of climate change for more than a decade. As a person who believes in the tenets of liberal democracy, I’ve watched the rise of white-supremacist, anti-immigrant and nationalistic ideologies with similar dread over the past few years.
But I always thought of those two trends — looming ecological dangers and the gathering strength of the far right — as unrelated, parallel crises in a turbulent time. Only recently have I begun to understand that they are deeply interconnected, an ugly pairing of forces drawing power from each other.
From France to Washington to New Zealand, angry voices on the hard right — nationalists, populists and others beyond conventional conservatism — are picking up old environmental tropes and adapting them to a moment charged with fears for the future. In doing so, they are giving potent new framing to a set of issues more typically associated with the left. Often, they emphasize what they see as the deep ties between a nation’s land and its people to exclude those they believe do not belong. Some twist scientific terms such as “invasive species†— foreign plants or animals that spread unchecked in a new ecosystem — to target immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities. And here’s what really frightens me: This dynamic is likely to intensify as climate change creates new stresses that could pit nations and groups against one another.
Beth Gardner is able to offer up just two examples
The neo-Nazi group Northwest Front, which advocates expelling people of color from the Pacific Northwest, appropriated a flag designed by a left-wing activist, reframing it with the slogan “The sky is the blue, and the land is the green. The white is for the people in between.†In Slovakia, far-right activists invoking the centrality of forests to national identity accuse members of the Roma ethnic minority of damaging them with excessive firewood gathering, Balsa Lubarda, a Central European University doctoral candidate studying the radical right, told me.
But, of course, ‘climate change’ is not about ‘climate change’, it’s about every Statist goal
President Trump tapped into this rhetoric in December. Responding to a question about the climate during a visit to London, he added a point about pollution in the ocean. “Certain countries are dumping unlimited loads of things in it,â€Â he said. “They tend to float toward the United States.†He did not specify particular countries, but the comment echoed plastic producers’ contention that much oceanic garbage comes from a handful of Asian nations that lack effective waste management. When I listened to Mr. Trump, I realized that what he said was freighted with something more than a corporate effort to pass the buck. He was casting plastic pollution as a threat that foreigners were visiting upon the United States.
Hmm, so, Trump talks about ocean pollution, and she has a problem with this, because it’s really about stopping illegal aliens.
Some radicals are drawn to apocalyptic climate scenarios, seeing openings for authoritarianism or a complete societal breakdown. “They want to accelerate it,†said Blair Taylor, program director at the Institute for Social Ecology, a left-wing educational center, who has studied such groups. “So after the downfall they can set up their fascist ethno-states, they can be the Übermensch.†Violent actors are grabbing hold of such ideas. The killers accused of massacring Muslims and Mexican immigrants last year in New Zealand and Texas posted online manifestoes weaving white supremacy with environmental rhetoric.
There are really too many hot-takes in this opinion piece, you really have to read it from start to finish. But, I thank her for the handy dandy graphic which I will use for years to come.
…is a wonderful climate friendly state taxing evil fossil fuels companies, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Legal Insurrection, with a post on the NEA pushing gender confusion education in schools.
Read: If All You See… »
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