California Democrat Introduces Bill To Make Voting Mandatory

By William Teach February 6, 2020 – 4:43 pm

So, apparently choice on counts towards killing the unborn

California lawmaker introduces bill making voting mandatory

If a California lawmaker has his way, registered voters in the state will be required to participate in every election.

On Tuesday, Assemblyman Marc Levine (D) introduced Assembly Bill 2070, making voting mandatory. “Democracy is not a spectator sport — it requires the active participation of all its citizens,” Levine said in a statement. “California is a national leader on expanding voting rights to its citizens. Those rights come with a responsibility by registered voters to cast their ballot and make sure that their voice is heard by their government.”

Under the measure, which isn’t expected to be considered until the spring, the secretary of state would determine the penalty for not voting. This is an unprecedented bill, and should it go into law, it would likely be challenged in court, the Los Angeles Times says.

It most likely will never even get a vote in the California General Assembly, much less pass, but, this is California, so, never say never. That LA Times article notes

Levine’s effort, Assembly Bill 2070, would require every Californian who registers to vote to “cast a ballot, marked or unmarked in whole or in part, at every election held within the territory within which the person resides.” AB 2070 has yet to be referred to a policy committee and is unlikely to be considered until the spring.

So, would this cause a lot of people to refuse to register, because the only way to fine people for not voting is for The Government to be completely in your business and tracking everyone, getting a report of who voted, and, really, whom and what they voted for. Could this lead to abuse by officials of the state, with people voting The Wrong Way being targeted?

Criminalize a Constitutional right and your freedom of choice. Seems to be the liberal way.

Read: California Democrat Introduces Bill To Make Voting Mandatory »

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If All You See..

By William Teach February 6, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…is a nation of climate refugees, requiring a big tax on the USA, you might just be a Warmist

IAYS

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on California protecting child molesters.

Read: If All You See.. »

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Sea Rise Might Be Worse Than Thought Because People Are Complaining On Twitter Or Something

By William Teach February 6, 2020 – 10:52 am

No, this is not the Babylon Bee

From the article

climate change joke

Thanks to climate change, destructive flooding caused by hurricanes is on the rise. But so is a less dramatic, if still pernicious, type of flooding. So-called sunny-day floods, which occur mostly in the fall when seasonal ocean tides are at their peak, are occurring more often as sea levels rise.

But scientists and urban planners often struggle to predict the impacts of these high-tide floods along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The mere fact that a town’s local tide gauge registers a flood isn’t particularly helpful for, say, school administrators deciding whether to cancel class, or cops deciding which roads to close, or insurance adjusters looking to raise premiums in vulnerable areas.

So some researchers are looking for clues in a new place: Twitter.

There’s good reason to search for more powerful indicators of flood impacts: Sunny-day floods disrupt traffic, threaten infrastructure, and drain local economies. A study in Science last year found that high-tide flooding cost businesses in downtown Annapolis, MD, more than $100,000 in lost revenue in 2017.

Currently, the main sources of data on sunny-day floods are tide gauges, which are often few and far between. They also don’t paint a very detailed picture of how water levels will actually affect a community, said Katherine Mach, an environmental scientist at the University of Miami who led the Annapolis study.

“Most of what we know about coastal flooding is how it affects people through major disasters. We know less about nuisance floods, recurring, short-duration floods,” she said. So, “understanding how high-tide floods directly impact people is a really challenging issue that has been intractable so far.”

See, what’s more important is people’s feelings rather than any actual hard data.

Read: Sea Rise Might Be Worse Than Thought Because People Are Complaining On Twitter Or Something »

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ClimaScare Today: Ocean Surface Circulation Might Possibly Maybe We Think Be Increasing

By William Teach February 6, 2020 – 7:34 am

Out: you driving a fossil fueled vehicle is causing the ocean circulation to shut down. In:

Climate change may be speeding up ocean circulation

Winds are picking up worldwide, and that is making the surface waters of the oceans swirl a bit faster, researchers report. A new analysis of the ocean’s kinetic energy, measured by thousands of floats around the world, suggests that surface ocean circulation been accelerating since the early 1990s.

Some of that sped-up circulation may be due to naturally recurring ocean-atmosphere patterns, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, researchers report February 5 in Science Advances. But the acceleration is greater than can be attributed to natural variability alone — suggesting that global warming may also be playing a role, says a team led by oceanographer Shijian Hu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Qingdao.

The connected system of massive currents that swirl between the world’s oceans, sometimes called the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, redistributes heat and nutrients around the globe and has a powerful effect on climate. Winds dominate mixing in the surface ocean: Prevailing winds in the tropics, for example, can push water masses aside, allowing deeper, nutrient-rich waters to surge upward.

How climate change might affect this Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, has garnered headlines, as some simulations have predicted that global warming would lead to a slowdown in which could eventually bring a deep chill to Europe. In 2018, paleoceanographer David Thornalley of University College London and colleagues reported evidence that the AMOC has weakened over the last 150 years, although the question remains uncertain (SN: 1/31/19).

But the new study focuses on “the amount of swirling around of upper ocean waters due to wind,” rather than the speed of that overturning circulation, says Thornalley, who was not involved in the work.

Of course, the study just suggests. In other words, they really do not know, and also offer natural reasons why this might possibly be happening. Because, really, it either is or isn’t. “Suggesting” is not actually scientific in this area. If they do not have the data and facts, don’t say it. It’s acceptable for telescope readings to suggest that an exo-planet has an atmosphere. Not for say that Earth’s surface waters are increasing. That’s just scaremongering.

Global warming has long been predicted to slow global wind speeds, called “global stilling.” That’s because the poles are warming faster than the equatorial region, and a smaller temperature gradient between the two zones might be expected to result in weaker winds (SN: 3/16/18). But recent studies, such as a report published November 2019 in Nature Climate Change, suggest that wind speeds around the world have actually been speeding up, at least since about 2010.

In other words, their science has no actual basis in fact, they’re just throwing sh*t against the wall to see if it sticks.

Simulations of increasing greenhouse gas emissions over the last two decades, the team found, produce a similar uptick in winds, suggesting that climate change may be speeding up the winds too.

Well, of course it did. Shocking!

Read: ClimaScare Today: Ocean Surface Circulation Might Possibly Maybe We Think Be Increasing »

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DHS Suspends Global Traveler, Trusted Traveler Programs For New York Over Illegal Alien Policies

By William Teach February 6, 2020 – 7:21 am

One has to wonder which Democrat run states with sanctuary policies will be next. Will DHS go after California? There should be penalties for sheltering illegal aliens

DHS suspends Global Entry, Trusted Traveler Programs for New York residents in response to sanctuary law

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf exclusively told Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wednesday that DHS was immediately suspending enrollment in Global Entry and several other Trusted Traveler Programs (TTP) for all New York state residents — a dramatic move in response to the liberal state’s recently enacted sanctuary “Green Light Law.”

The sweeping order came a day after President Trump, in his State of the Union address, condemned left-wing states and local governments that “release dangerous criminal aliens to prey upon the public,” and called on Congress to pass a law establishing civil liability for sanctuary cities.

In a letter to top New York state officials obtained exclusively by Fox News, Wolf noted that the New York law prohibited state DMVs from sharing criminal records with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“In New York alone, last year ICE arrested 149 child predators, identified or rescued 105 victims of exploitation and human trafficking, arrested 230 gang members, and seized 6,487 pounds of illegal narcotics, including fentanyl and opioids,” Wolf wrote. “In the vast majority of these cases, ICE relied on New York DMV records to fulfill its mission.”

Illegal immigrants rushed to New York DMVs in large numbers after the law, which allowed them to obtain driver’s licenses or learner’s permits regardless of their immigration status, took effect last December. The law also permitted applicants to use foreign documents, including passports, to be submitted in order to obtain licenses.

The NY Green Light law itself is written to enable illegals to easily obtain a driver’s license. If the illegal in question does not have a social security number, they cannot obtain a REAL ID. What of those using stolen SS#’s? Further, NY accepts documents that have been expired for up to 24 months, so, you could have someone who’s documents expired but will be accepted to be considered for a REAL ID.

The law, Wolf went on, “compromises CBP’s ability to confirm whether an individual applying for TTP membership meets program eligibility requirements.”

Because TTPs rely on states to verify individuals’ identities, New York residents “will no longer be eligible to enroll or re-enroll” in select TTPs — including Global Entry, NEXUS, SENTRI, and FAST.

Twelve states and territories offer driver’s licenses for illegals along with New York: California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Washington, Illinois, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. New Jersey just passed a law that takes effect in 2021. Might be time to go after them, as well.

Read: DHS Suspends Global Traveler, Trusted Traveler Programs For New York Over Illegal Alien Policies »

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Comrade Bernie Seems Upset That Trump Failed To Mention The Climate Crisis (scam)

By William Teach February 5, 2020 – 3:01 pm

Of course, this was right before Comrade Bernie took off in a fossil fueled private jet

State of the Union: Bernie Sanders says Trump lacked the ‘courage’ to mention climate change during speech

In Donald Trump’s lengthy State of the Union speech to Congress, he spoke about the US economy, took aim at Democrats’ plans for healthcare funding, and defended gun rights, but he failed to mention perhaps the biggest issue the planet faces: the climate crisis.

The US president has had an inconsistent and contradictory record on the subject, previously dismissing it as a “Chinese hoax”, “mythical”, “non-existent” and pulling America out of the Paris agreement, though he has also described climate change as “very important”.

The glaring omission from Mr Trump’s Tuesday night speech did not escape the notice of Bernie Sanders, who along with Pete Buttigieg, is now apparently leading the race to become the Democrats’ next presidential candidate.

“As important as it is to respond to what President Trump said tonight, it is equally important to discuss what Trump refused to talk about. In the year 2020, how can a president of the United States give a State of the Union speech and not mention climate change?” Mr Sanders said to supporters following Mr Trump’s address. (snip)

He said: “How do you give a speech – a State of the Union speech – and not mention climate change when the leading scientists of the world tell us that climate change is the greatest existential threat facing humanity, and that they as scientists have actually underestimated the speed and the severity with which climate change is wreaking havoc on our country and the entire world.

“I did not hear President Trump say one word about what it means when Australia is now on fire because of severe drought. And about the unprecedented level of flooding and extreme weather disturbances that we are experiencing. And he failed to talk about how many American communities could be underwater in the next century as a result of rising sea levels.

“By ignoring and in fact exacerbating the crisis of climate change, President Trump is turning his back on the children of America and on future generations and dooming them to live on a planet increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable.”

Uh huh

In fact, Trump did briefly mention climate

President Donald Trump said in his remarks at the State of the Union address on Tuesday at the nation’s Capitol that his administration is addressing concerns about climate stewardship with legislation Republicans in Congress are introducing, including the Trillion Trees Act.

“To protect the environment, days ago I announced the United States will join the One Trillion Trees Initiative, an ambitious effort to bring together governments … to plant new trees in America and around the world,” Trump said.

So, when is Comrade Bernie going to walk the talk?

Read: Comrade Bernie Seems Upset That Trump Failed To Mention The Climate Crisis (scam) »

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If All You See…

By William Teach February 5, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil carbon polluting refrigerator, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Victory Girls Blog, with a post on Pelosi’s really bad, horrible, no good day.

Read: If All You See… »

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Climate Cultist Wants Draconian Behavior Change To Solve Hotcoldwetdry

By William Teach February 5, 2020 – 10:30 am

It’s funny how Warmists always seem to want to force behavioral changes in Other People, eh? Here’s Paul Gosselin at NoTricksZone, who loves checking the unhinged German Warmists

German “Environmental Expert”/Activist Suggests Humans Need Draconian “Behavior Change”

Today I found an interview with an “environmental expert” by the German alarmist site Klimareporter here. It conveys to us the real aims of the radical climate movement. In a nutshell: To change, limit and dominantly control human behavior.

In the Kilmareporter interview, Prof. Rainer Griesshammer says that changing light bulbs, riding your bicycle and eating organic aren’t going to cut it when it comes to rescuing the climate.

In the interview, Klimareporter brings up Mr. Griesshammer’s  recent book in which he calls for “changing politics and life” in order to combat climate change.

Politics, Griesshammer says, will “not be enough on its own” and that “changes in several areas of society – in the value system, consumer behavior, the legal framework and the market, as well as in infrastructure and technology development” are required. (snip)

What is needed, he says, is radical change in “behavior and shopping”. According to Griesshammer: “In the mainstream, there will only be significant changes if laws, CO2 pricing, product development, infrastructures and behavior all move in the same direction.”

In other words, Government must force citizens to comply. Remind me what type of government that is?

All while the Elites do their own thing

Let’s not forget: “It is all too easy to request others to do things that carry no personal cost to yourself.”

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Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Trump’s Middle East Peace Plan Won’t Succeed Because Of ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach February 5, 2020 – 8:09 am

Personally, I would have picked “it won’t work because too many Palestinians are violent, hate Jews, hate Israel, and want to destroy the nation, along with lots and lots of Islamists”, but, the NY Times’ Thomas Freidman has thoughts relating to ‘climate change’, and then something nefarious

Mother Nature Scoffs at Trump’s Mideast Peace Plan

To get a different perspective on the Trump-Kushner peace plan, I decided to call the best Middle East analyst I know. Her name is Mother Nature.

So, Mother Nature, what did you think of the Deal of the Century?

Well, Tom, not a lot. For starters, it mentioned me in only a few short sentences. Let me take you on a tour of the neighborhood, as I see it. Warning: My maps have no boundary lines, no walls — and no Areas A, B and C in the West Bank.

You can be sure that President Trump, who has declared climate change a hoax, has no idea that the Eastern Mediterranean has experienced drought conditions for 15 of the last 20 years, which is unparalleled in the modern historical record. A recent study by Tel Aviv University predicts that the Eastern Mediterranean will get steadily hotter and drier and gradually lose two months of winter — i.e., rainfall months — within the next 25 years. Meanwhile, in 1948 Israel’s population was 800,000. It’s now 8.7 million. Jordan’s was 450,000. It’s now 10 million. Syria’s was three million, and it’s now 17.5 million. So, the future is steadily more people and less water.

Who’s shocked that droughts happen in an area that tends to be rather warm and dry, particularly during a Holocene warm period?

How has this affected the war on terrorism?

Jordan was the third-largest contributor of youth recruits to ISIS in the Arab world. You can be sure plenty of these recruits were from the Jordan Valley, which is full of frustrated young men who can’t get jobs and so can’t marry. It’s a trifecta of ecological demise, poverty and radicalization.

See, it is drought from Other People driving fossil fueled vehicles that caused ISIS.

So what would be Mother Nature’s peace principles?

To begin, any plan that carves up the West Bank into siloed political spaces, walls and roads — driven by a Trump-Kushner desire to embrace the “reality” of where Jewish settlers have haphazardly settled around the West Bank — makes no sense to me. This is a single ecosystem, and there will be no physical security for one if there is not human security for all. More than once my flash floods have knocked down Israel’s security barrier around Tulkarm and Jerusalem.

In other words, Israel must give up its sovereignty and merge with all the areas around it run by Palestinian terrorists, at which point Israel will be taken over, and cease to exist as a Jewish nation. Funny how so many leftists manufacture ways to get rid of Israel.

Read: Trump’s Middle East Peace Plan Won’t Succeed Because Of ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

Posted in Global Warming, Israel, Liberal World | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Washington Post: Well, Yeah, The Economy Is Great, But, Is It Really Great?

By William Teach February 5, 2020 – 7:54 am

The Washington Post editorial board is vexed. See, the economy is doing pretty darned good under President Trump, and they just can’t have that, because that’s bad for Democrats

The economy is strong, as Trump says. But at what cost?

AS CONGRESS gathered for the annual State of the Union address Tuesday, there was no denying that the state of the national economy is good indeed, although President Trump, predictably, exaggerated how good. The broadest measures — gross domestic product growth, wages and labor force participation — all point in varying degrees in the right direction, with the most sensitive indicator, unemployment, at a 50-year low of 3.5 percent. The laws of politics decree that incumbent presidents take the blame for negative economic conditions and the credit for positive ones. In that sense, Mr. Trump’s posture, in an election year, is entirely conventional. But the true State of the Union after three years of this otherwise unconventional presidency cannot be measured so straightforwardly.

Of course, while the economy was blah to middling under Obama, but slowly, ever so slowly getting better, the WPEB never complained about being measured so straightforwardly, nor did the so-called straight news section.

One question is whether Mr. Trump’s policies deserve the credit he axiomatically takes for the economy. On that point, the answer is mixed at best: Economic growth under President Obama after the Great Recession ended in 2009 averaged 2.2 percent annually, so Mr. Trump’s 2.5 percent annual average is a modest improvement over what he inherited, partially attributable to Federal Reserve policy — and partially to the stimulus from the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts Mr. Trump’s policies created over the past two years. At the same time, the Trump tariff wars with China, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Japan and Europe (did we miss anyone?) generated countervailing uncertainty that slowed growth. Also, the tax cuts, heavily weighted toward businesses and the well-to-do, probably exacerbated after-tax income inequality, notwithstanding the wage increases among lower-income workers Mr. Trump touts as a “blue-collar boom.”

See, back then they gave Obama all the credit, but, now, it apparently only has a little to do with Trump.

More consequential is whether the current prosperity has been built on a sustainable basis. Again, the jury is out: Mr. Trump’s corporate tax-rate cut represents a structural change in favor of investment that even many Democrats advocated, albeit not to the degree Republicans have enacted. Nevertheless, productivity growth rates remain stubbornly sluggish, and Mr. Trump has failed to deliver on his promises of major new infrastructure spending, which might have enhanced the economy’s growth capacity. The sheer growth of the labor force is another key factor in economic dynamism, but Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration stance works against that, too.

If the Democrat controlled House won’t vote on infrastructure, there’s nothing Trump can do. If they’re shirking their Constitutional duty to vote, what does Trump do? But, hey, what about those illegals? Are we supposed to care? Are they suggesting that we need to prioritize illegals over Americans?

Finally, even if the economy were performing as well as Mr. Trump says, and even if he deserved all the credit, this unsettling question would remain: At what price? The president, of course, has not only changed economic policy since 2017; he has tried to change the presidency — from a focal point of national unity to a bully pulpit for partisan and personal rancor, up to and including the search for foreign-dug dirt on a political rival for which he faces an impeachment trial in the Senate. Mr. Trump overtly asserts his total innocence in all respects, even as he implicitly tempts Americans with a subtly different proposition: to accept his behavior, and his conscious efforts to divide the country, as somehow necessary trade-offs for prosperity. This is as false as it is Faustian; trust and consensus are essential ingredients of a modern, efficient economy, not to mention indispensable to a thriving, durable Union.

Um, what does that have to do with the economy? Little to nothing, of course, this is just Trump Derangement Syndrome in print. Democrats, when forced to admit that the economy is pretty darned good, will still attempt to find ways to knock it. “Oh, hey, it’s good now, but, can it last? It’s going to crater soon.”

Read: Washington Post: Well, Yeah, The Economy Is Great, But, Is It Really Great? »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Donald Trump, Economy | 32 Comments | Trackback URL
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