NY Times Wants Senators To Do The Right Thing On Impeachment Or Something

Of course, the editorial board of the NY Times has already convicted Trump, so, of course they want the Senate to be serious

Take Impeachment Seriously, Senators

It would be nice to have faith that, as the Senate prepares to receive the articles of impeachment against President Trump and gears up for its role in this rare and momentous process, it will do the right thing. Confronted with a mountain of evidence that an American president abused his power by shaking down a vulnerable country for his own personal gain — and then stonewalled a congressional investigation into his behavior — senators should spare no effort in conducting a fair and thorough trial, complete with witnesses and documentary evidence.

Nice that they’ve already decided, but, then, this is a movement that started even before Donald Trump was elected. This is the same editorial board (obviously, many different people now, but the view from the paper hasn’t changed from bat guano insane leftism) which supported investigating Bill Clinton but not impeaching him, despite actual violations of the law (suborning testimony, witness tampering, perjury). Bill was of their Party. Trump is not. It’s that simple.

Alas, in 2020, the Senate is led by Mitch McConnell, who has demonstrated time and again that he is more concerned with covering for Mr. Trump than protecting the integrity of the office Mr. Trump holds, the security of the nation he leads or the Constitution he swore to defend.

Same paper was never concerned with Operation Fast and Furious, IRS targeting, avoiding the duly elected Legislative branch and going with Constitutionally dubious executive orders and rules, etc, nor were they concerned with Hillary Clinton violating numerous State Department rules, government rules, and national security law that would put you or I in jail.

With few exceptions, Mr. McConnell has enjoyed the lock-step support of his caucus. So it has been notable to hear over the past few days a hint of dissension within the ranks, as a handful of Republican senators, including Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, have indicated that they oppose a straight-up dismissal of the charges against the president.

Is this like the lock-step support in the House for Nancy Pelosi?

Mr. McConnell, meanwhile, has yet to show that he takes any part of this process seriously. He has already announced that he will work hand-in-glove with the Trump administration as it defends the president and that he will blithely violate the oath of impartiality he is required to take. On Tuesday, Mr. McConnell mocked the House Democrats’ calls for more witnesses to testify, saying they can’t claim that the case against Mr. Trump is so strong as to be impeachable, and yet “also so weak that the Senate needs to go fishing.””

Impeachment is a political process. This is what Democrats want from the start, since they can’t beat him at the ballot box. The House hearings were so super serious that due process was thrown out the window. This was all a sham, a method to cancel out the results of the 2016 election. That the House sat on the articles of impeachment for weeks and weeks after telling us that was a danger to the nation and such.

There is even time for President Trump to behave like, well, a president. Each of the last two presidents to face impeachment proceedings — Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon — complied with congressional subpoenas, if grudgingly. The question must be asked again: If Mr. Trump is so confident that he did nothing wrong, why does he refuse to let these officials testify or turn over key documents? And if Mr. McConnell is so confident that his party’s leader will be vindicated, why fight so hard to prevent the full truth from coming out?

So much for the 5th Amendment. So much for due process. This is how deranged Democrats are.

Read: NY Times Wants Senators To Do The Right Thing On Impeachment Or Something »

Hotcoldwetdry Could Maybe Possibly “We’re Just Spitballin’ Here” Lead To More Injuries And Deaths

This is plainly your fault for driving to work in a fossil fueled vehicle with your coffee from far away, and you must atone by paying a tax and purchasing carbon offsets from Al Gore

Climate change could lead to more injuries and deaths
Drownings, car accidents, and violence that spike during unusual weather could be on the rise

Injuries like drownings, falls, and assaults could kill up to an additional 2,135 people each year in the US as climate change continues to cause unusual temperature swings. The findings by researchers from Imperial College London, Columbia, and Harvard were published today in the journal Nature Medicine. The connection between swings in temperature — unusual spells of heat or cold — and injuries still can’t be explained, but researchers say that their estimates could help spur efforts to prevent those deaths.

So, they cannot explain them, but, they’ll still fearmonger? Science!

Looking at injuries associated with climate change has been a blind spot in research, authors of the study published today say. Previous studies have looked into how climate change could drive more deaths from things like heat illness or diseases spread by mosquitoes. Between 2030 and 2050, about 250,000 people could die each year because of malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress made worse by climate change, according to the World Health Organization.

But 5 million people die from injuries across the globe each year, making up nearly one in ten of all deaths. Many of those injuries can be prevented, which is why the authors say they ought to be considered as part of efforts to better prepare for a future with potentially catastrophic climate change.

Some of the injuries they looked at are unintentional, including deaths from drownings, falls, and car accidents. The study also looked at intentionally inflicted injuries from assaults and suicide, which could point to how important it is to address mental health as people adapt to a changing planet. Another study found that suicide rates in the US and Mexico rose along with higher average monthly temperatures.

The reasons why suicides and other types of injuries jump during temperature swings isn’t very well understood. Drownings could be related to more people swimming to cool off. The researchers also note that people tend to be more agitated in hot weather, and drink more alcohol — which could contribute to vehicle deaths and assault. Other studies have linked higher temperatures with more violent crime. On the other side of the spectrum, colder weather can lead to more falls — but this study found that warmer temperatures may actually reduce the risk of seniors falling and injuring themselves.

So, things happen during hot and cold weather, and they don’t really know if it has anything in the least to do with ‘climate change’, but, hey, they’ll still link it all, and we can solve this with a tax.

Read: Hotcoldwetdry Could Maybe Possibly “We’re Just Spitballin’ Here” Lead To More Injuries And Deaths »

If All You See…

…are glaciers that will soon, SOOON, disappear from the climate crisis, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on fatphobia being a thoughtcrime.

Read: If All You See… »

The Hill Seems Rather Upset That Trump Said It Didn’t Matter If Iranian Attacks Were Imminent

The Hill fableists Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels think they are on to Something Big

Trump says it doesn’t matter if Soleimani posed an imminent threat

President Trump on Monday downplayed the significance of any imminent threat to the U.S. before he ordered the strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, raising new questions about the intelligence preceding the move.

The comments marked the latest revision in what’s become a shifting explanation about the threat Soleimani posed to U.S. personnel in the Middle East. Over the weekend, some of Trump’s top advisers were unable to confirm his claim that Soleimani was planning to target four U.S. embassies.

The episode has prompted renewed scrutiny of the Jan. 3 strike that nearly set off a wider conflict in the Middle East.

“This administration already has a credibility problem, and President Trump has a pretty casual relationship with the truth,” said William Inboden, who served on former President George W. Bush’s National Security Council. “So even when he does what I would regard as the right thing or a good policy decision with Soleimani, he then hurts himself and widens the credibility gap with these shifting explanations.”

Can you guess what’s missing in this article? The actual full comment by Trump in full. Which is kinda important, as it would harm the Narrative they are trying to spin

Later on in the article they have a little bit

Trump on Monday insisted the threat posed by Soleimani was imminent and that his team was in agreement on the strike, but tweeted “it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!”

Kinda missing context, eh? Previously, Chalfant and Samuels wrote

The drone strike was widely cheered by Republicans, who argued it was long overdue given Soleimani’s actions as head of Iran’s Quds Force, a designated terrorist organization. He had also been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of American service members in the Middle East.

That is rather a horrible past, is it not? It’s interesting that they note that only Republicans were cheering. There’s really no revision, Trump is simply noting that Soleimani is a terrible person. Seriously, going by Dem talking points, it was wrong for Obama to take out Bin Laden.

Read: The Hill Seems Rather Upset That Trump Said It Didn’t Matter If Iranian Attacks Were Imminent »

Say, How Bad Can The Climate Crisis (scam) Get If Trump Is Re-elected?

President Trump should come out in favor of the Cult of Climastrology: most Warmists will suddenly find themselves “deniers” due to their kneejerk reaction to being opposed to anything Trump believes

How bad can the climate crisis get if Trump wins again?

Climate pollution in the US is up under Donald Trump and threatens to undermine international efforts to stall the crisis, especially if he wins re-election this year and secures a second term in the White House.

While US climate emissions fell 2.1% in 2019, they rose significantly in 2018, according to estimates from the economic analysis firm Rhodium Group. On net, emissions are slightly higher than in the beginning of 2017, when Trump’s administration began enacting dozens of environment rollbacks aimed at helping the oil and gas industry.

Trump is still working to further weaken bedrock standards. This week he proposed to allow major projects like pipelines and highways to bypass reviews of how they will contribute to global warming. The draft rule is unlikely to become final before the November election, but it is yet another reason industries weighing climate choices might delay significant action. (snip)

Andrew Light, a climate negotiator for President Barack Obama’s state department, said the world is taking note of those efforts, but if Trump is re-elected “you are going to see a lot of people who are worried anew about what the US can do”.

Americans choosing Trump would send the signal that they don’t care about the climate, Light said.

We don’t, we really don’t. But, most don’t even know they don’t care about Hotcoldwetdry, because it is a low ranking issue for most voters, because they really don’t care about it in practice.

The Trump administration has initiated essentially all of its planned climate rollbacks – from weakening standards for cars to go farther on less gasoline to erasing rules for power companies to shift away from coal. It would be able to defend those changes in court against environment advocates and Democratic states if the president wins election.

“The biggest impact of a second term of a Trump administration would just be more lost time,” said Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group. “It would be more time in which emissions weren’t really declining when they really needed to be.”

Here’s what Donald Trump should do: release a statement about his changed belief and go on TV saying he wants to enact all the policies of the Cult of Climastrology, including the Green New Deal. Then he should lay out exactly what those policies will do. All the higher taxes and fees, all the control of citizen’s lives by Government, all the restrictions on foods, products, vehicles, travel, size of homes, use of air conditioning and heating, no more ice makers in the fridge, electricity will be metered (ie, shut of during busy times and times not home), rolling brownouts and blackouts will be common place, etc. That the cost of living for citizens will go up, but, it is For Their Own Good.

How well would that go over?

Then he should explain that he’s exempt from all the restrictions and such because he’s a Leader, and it would interfere with him getting stuff done, just like for all the other bigwigs in the CoC.

Might there be a few people who suddenly realize what the CoC is actually about, and quite? I’ve got a movie scene right on the tip of my brain, one where people are cheering and into it and then are being told stuff where they go “hey, wait a minute, what’s that? That’s not what we want.” Maybe I’ll suddenly realize which one it was.

Read: Say, How Bad Can The Climate Crisis (scam) Get If Trump Is Re-elected? »

Hot Take: The Gun Sanctuary Movement Is Seeking Protection From Democracy Itself!

Surprisingly, there has been very little written in terms of the 2nd Amendment gun sanctuaries, except for straight articles. So, if there’s going to be a hot take, it has to be a scorcher, right? Along comes Francis Wilkinson at Bloomberg, which is, of course, owned by gun grabber Michael Bloomberg

The True Aim of the Gun Sanctuary Movement

At first glance, the Second Amendment sanctuary movement currently burrowing into rural Virginia looks like a ballistic twist on the immigrant sanctuary cities movement. Both movements defy the law, one to protect undocumented immigrants from legally sanctioned deportation, the other to protect unlicensed firearms from legally sanctioned regulation.

But there is a significant difference, more political than legal. One sanctuary movement aims to protect a vulnerable population from personal harm. The other movement seeks to protect a group’s capacity to do harm — no matter how loud the outcry from a population vulnerable to gun violence.

First, that’s actually not the primary hot-take. Second, it’s not guns that are licensed, but citizens. The vast majority of lawful firearms owners have no problem with background checks, and want firearms kept out of the hands of criminals. The gun grabber movement seeks to make law abiding citizens into criminals, rather than cracking down on criminals who use guns. Also, it is interesting that Wilkinson mentions “unlicensed”: is that a slip up that denotes what the gun grabbers actually want, which is registration, which means it is easier to confiscate later?

Advocates for immigrant sanctuaries commonly invoke humanitarian, economic and public-safety arguments. Leaders of the guns-everywhere-for-anybody movement tend to dress up their concerns in the legal finery of the Second Amendment (minus the “well-regulated militia” part). Their argument, reduced to its essence, is two words: It’s unconstitutional.

Well, yeah. She should also read the Virginia Constitution, Article I, Section 11 (due process) and Section 14 (firearms).

Roughly 100 Virginia cities and counties have embraced some kind of sanctuary provision regarding guns. Other locales around the nation have as well. In the extremes of gun culture, commonplace proposals are treated as existential threats.

The thing is, we know where your “commonplace proposals” lead, when gun grabbers talk about the Australian, and now New Zealand, solution: mass bannings and confiscation of lawfully acquired firearms from non-criminals, disarming the public.

Let’s skip to the primary hot-take

America is a representative democracy. But the gun lobby and other parts of the conservative coalition are increasingly skeptical of that. Armed with an all-purpose Constitution that means whatever they want it to mean, they seek to block popular government action.

Nope, it is a representative republic. Same with Virginia, which has lots of protections for the minority from the majority. When can call them part of the Democracy model, since they vote. But, it is still a republic, not a democracy. Not mob rule.

The Second Amendment sanctuaries emerging in Virginia and elsewhere may mark a burgeoning conservative counterculture. Contempt for the “geographically small, yet heavily populated” regions where most Americans reside is becoming a conservative tic. It’s the impetus behind those triumphal MAGA maps depicting countless hectares of American forest, farm and pasture in bold Republican red, while little enclaves such as Brooklyn, with a higher population than 15 states, are dismissed with a tiny blotch of blue.

Densely populated America, in other words, is not real America, and opposing real America is by definition unconstitutional. What the gun sanctuary movement is seeking is not protection from government overreach, but from democracy.

Well, that would be a sick burn if the nation, and Virginia, were democracies.

Read: Hot Take: The Gun Sanctuary Movement Is Seeking Protection From Democracy Itself! »

Say, Will ‘Climate Change’ Move The Needle For The 2020 Elections?

This is a very important question to the people at the Atlantic Council, a right leaning institution

Will climate change move the needle in 2020?

Nope. ‘Nuff said.

Oh, you want article. OK.

From the release of the Green New Deal to global protests on environmental policy, “climate [has become] a prominent national issue and all the attention it received in 2019 guarantees that it will be a top issue in an American presidential election for the first time ever,” according to former US Congressman Carlos Curbelo (R-FL).

Speaking at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi on January 12, Curbelo argued that there has been a recent “Republican evolution on climate,” that has led Republican politicians at the federal and state level to begin to ponder their own climate policies in response to those of their Democratic colleagues. “The growth of the Republican side of the aisle,” on this issue “has been extraordinary,” he said. He noted plans by Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy to roll out a new package of bills to address climate change and the formation of a bipartisan climate caucus by Senator Mike Braun (R-IN) and Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) as evidence that Republicans are beginning to move on the issue. This shift in thinking leads Curbelo to believe that “we are moving inexorably towards a national climate policy and…that will happen regardless of who wins the next election.”

Nothing says “I believe and I’m super concerned” like taking a long fossil fueled flight to Abu Dhabi. One interesting thing is the way some of the squishy Republicans are handling their beliefs in the man-caused climate change scam. They avoid taxation, fees, and governmental power increases. Mostly. And much is simply pandering to brainwashed cultists.

The climate plans of the 2020 Democratic candidates for president have already received significant attention as the primary season heats up. While there is concern among many Democrats that the plans of Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (D-VT) are too radical for a general election, Goldwyn argued that “there is rhetoric and there is reality. I think the rhetoric is that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders cannot, without having both House of Congress and a lot of support from swing Democrats, intervene and [enact policies like] regulating fracking on private lands.” Garbow argued that in his view, there really isn’t “a tremendous difference between the climate plans at least that have been put forward by Elizabeth Warren, certainly Bernie Sanders. Even [former Vice President] Joe Biden’s plan is relatively aggressive in contrast to what we saw in the Obama administration and what we have seen since.”

Goldwyn warned, however, that the 2020 election will likely once again come down to swing states like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, that have significant oil and natural gas industries. “Democratic candidates have to have their eyes on Pennsylvania and Ohio and places where they are gas producing states,” he said, “and not threaten the efficacy of their industry there.” (snip)

All of the panelists agreed that climate change will be one of the top issues on the minds of voters as they elect a new president in 2020—even if the implications of their choice are still unclear.

The panelists were squishy Republicans like Michael Steele and climate cultist Dems like Curbelo. If they think this election will be about Hotcoldwetdry, then they haven’t been paying attention. Because it doesn’t move the needle. The Democrats whose focus for the primaries was on ‘climate change’ dropped out. Then a few more go in, and they aren’t gaining traction. If they want to lose swing states, they’ll keep yapping about ‘climate change.’ And then Trump will run roughshod through the china shop, explaining how the Democrats plans will increase taxes and fees, as well as limit freedom and choice.

Read: Say, Will ‘Climate Change’ Move The Needle For The 2020 Elections? »

If All You See…

…is heat snow from fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Legal Insurrection, with a post on Pelosi downplaying the Iranian protesters.

BTW, ladies, it’s a new decade. The whole grabbing the hair thing for selfies is so last decade.

Read: If All You See… »

Are St. Greta Posts Being Written By Her Father And A Climate Activist?

Pretty big if true

The original post comes from Zero Hedge, which has screenshots

A Thursday evening software update at Facebook accidentally allowed anyone to view exactly who is posting under the accounts of public figures, businesses and other entities, according to Wired.

The result? For starters, some 3 million followers of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg have been reading posts written  by her father, Svante Thunberg, and a climate activist in India who serves as a delegate at the UN’s Climate Change organization, Adarsh Prathap. Thunberg, Inc. claims Greta is still the one writing the content.

Greta, Inc. explained this in a Saturday Facebook post purporting to be the young climate activist.

“Some people have been asking who manages this page. First of all, since last spring I only use Facebook to repost what I write on my Twitter and Instagram accounts,” reads the post, in which ‘she’ says she tried Facebook “early on,” but didn’t like it, so she uses “my father Svantes account to repost content.”

“The rest that is shared on Facebook is reposted from Twitter and Instagram by the guy who founded the Greta Thunberg Facebook page long before I knew it existed. His name is Adarsh Prathap and he lives in India. Since a lot of people thought it was my official page in the beginning I asked if I could co-manage it and he said yes.”

In other words, “of course it’s not me silly – you should have known I just ‘co-manage’ the fan page.”

As Zero Hedge notes, the Facebook page is solely hers, no mention of others. We’ve all wondered who is writing the posts, not just on Facebook but other social media outlets, because so many big ones seem to come from an adult, rather than a teenager who’s blowing off her education. It says a lot when St. Greta cannot actually answer questions off-script.

Read: Are St. Greta Posts Being Written By Her Father And A Climate Activist? »

Good News: New Zealand Schools To Teach Kids How To Be Deranged Over Hotcoldwetdry

This should work out well, eh?

New Zealand schools to teach students about climate crisis, activism and ‘eco anxiety’

Every school in New Zealand will this year have access to materials about the climate crisis written by the country’s leading science agencies – including tools for students to plan their own activism, and to process their feelings of “eco-anxiety” over global heating.

The curriculum will put New Zealand at the forefront of climate change education worldwide; governments in neighbouring Australia and the United Kingdom have both faced criticism for lack of cohesive teaching on the climate crisis. The New Zealand scheme, which will be offered to all schools that teach 11 to 15 year-old students, will not be compulsory, the government said.

“One of the pieces of feedback we’ve got from teachers around the country is that they’re really crying out for something like this, because kids are already in the conversation about climate change,” said James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate change minister and co-leader of the left-leaning Green Party.

They’ll be teaching the kids that everything is horrible and they are all doomed and the Earth is doomed and that they should feel horrible and anxious and neurotic, then tell them how to process those feelings of Doom, which shall surely involve activism and agitating for the Government to take Other People’s money, freedom, and choice.

“They’re seeing stuff on social media on a daily basis and none of it’s good news, and the sense of powerlessness that comes from that is extremely distressing.”

Perhaps they need to stop reading unhinged doomsayers, put down the phone, and go outside and trek around a beautiful country.

Materials created for teachers that were provided to the Guardian suggest students keep a “feelings thermometer” to track their emotions, learn how to change defeatist self-talk, and consider how their feelings could generate action and response.

This won’t work out well. Perhaps it is a good thing that the government is banning firearms, because these kids are going to graduate with serious mental health issues.

Read: Good News: New Zealand Schools To Teach Kids How To Be Deranged Over Hotcoldwetdry »

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