New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to do to big oil what big law did to big tobacco, from Washington Free Beacon:
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D.) on Wednesday appeared to blame oil companies for the damage that Hurricane Sandy caused in New York in 2012.
[…]
De Blasio also said that New York City is suing five of the world’s most powerful oil companies—BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell—for what he described as contributing to climate change and covering it up.
“That’s why we’re suing five of the biggest petroleum companies, because like the tobacco companies some years ago, they understood this crisis,” de Blasio said. “They tried very intently to cover up the information about climate change and to project a propaganda campaign suggesting that climate change wasn’t real and go ahead and keep using your fossil fuels.”
Good luck to Mayor Bill to identifying the source to the carbon molecules that he supposed to have caused Sandy. Leaving aside natural carbon sources, such a Mayor Bill himself, petrochemical are minority contributor to human carbon emmissions, from What’s Your Impact:
Fossil fuel combustion/use
The largest human source of carbon dioxide emissions is from the combustion of fossil fuels. This produces 87% of human carbon dioxide emissions. Burning these fuels releases energy which is most commonly turned into heat, electricity or power for transportation. Some examples of where they are used are in power plants, cars, planes and industrial facilities. In 2011, fossil fuel use created 33.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.1
The 3 types of fossil fuels that are used the most are coal, natural gas and oil. Coal is responsible for 43% of carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion, 36% is produced by oil and 20% from natural gas.5
Moreover, Mayor Bill’s five big oil defendants not particularly big in the global oil market. The largest oil companies are not privately owned but rather national oil companies. Only one of Mayor Bill’s defendants even make the top five, from Wikipedia. Mayor Bill can cry, and sue, wolf. However can he show cause and effect?
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We have got problems in River City, via Ace:
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- Tom Cotton Shoots Down “Gang of 6” DACA/Amnesty: “Might As Well Roll It Straight Into the Trash Can”
- Three in Four Terrorism Convicts Were Born Abroad, Feds Say
- Report: DREAMer-Age Children Have Crime Rate Twice That of Same Age Citizens
- Diversity Visa Lottery Winner Offered to Kill Obama for ISIS
- DHS to Arrest Local Officials Who Harbor Illegal Aliens in “Sanctuary Cities”
- Tom Cotton Shoots Down “Gang of 6” DACA/Amnesty: “Might As Well Roll It Straight Into the Trash Can”
So what does Cory Booker (D – NJ) do? Go over the deep end, via Power Line:
“I hurt! When Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage when I heard about his experience in that meeting, and for you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues … when tens of millions of Americas are hurting right now because of what they’re worried about what happened in the White House, that’s unacceptable to me!”
Booker video:
Over what Senator Dick Durbin(D – IL) rightly or wrongly attributes to President Donald Trump, a truthful characterization of some nations in Africa as scat houses.
Yes Senator Booker, that melt down of Dean sure put him over the top, video:
Two points, one when your only sources is Dick Durbin, you have no source. Two, some nations in Africa are scat house nations. Three, losing sleep. Give me break. Mrs. Clinton called half the electorate deplorable. Nary a complaint from about that. Four real people have real problems, headlines above, what one person may or may not have said is trivial problem.
Wherein we see Jonah Goldberg…
I once heard Jesse Jackson explain that racial integration of the NBA made it stronger and better. He was right. But would gender integration of the NBA have the same effect? Would diversifying professional basketball by height? Probably not.
Actually, more like absolutely not. As I wrote back in 2004 it’s not diversity that’s being celebrated in basketball it’s more of a monochromatic culture… And it’s one that’s as far as I’m concerned crippled the game forever.
But that’s just a diversion here. Let’s go on to the main course…
All of these analogies can take you only so far. Thomas Sowell once said, “The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.”
There’s a growing body of evidence that even if diversity— the kind that results from immigration — once made America stronger, it may not be doing so anymore. Robert Putnam, a liberal sociologist at Harvard, found that increased diversity corrodes civil society by eroding shared values, customs and institutions. People tend to “hunker down” and retreat from civil society, at least in the short and medium term.
I think the real culprit here isn’t immigration or diversity in general, but the rising stigma against assimilation. Particularly on college campuses, but also in large swaths of mainstream journalism and in the louder corners of the fever swamp right, the idea that people of all backgrounds should embrace a single conception of “Americanism” is increasingly taboo.
Anyone of any race or national origin can be an American, but it requires effort and desire from both the individual and the larger society. There’s a shortage of both these days.
Absolutely correct. And I will say this again, 90% if not more of what gets passed off as racial issues these days are actually cultural issues…. Including that little slam I put into the first paragraph As regards basketball.
Particularly, note this paragraph again…
There’s a growing body of evidence that even if diversity— the kind that results from immigration — once made America stronger, it may not be doing so anymore. Robert Putnam, a liberal sociologist at Harvard, found that increased diversity corrodes civil society by eroding shared values, customs and institutions. People tend to “hunker down” and retreat from civil society, at least in the short and medium term.
It is absolutely crucial that we understand this point. Moreover it is the same group of people, Democrats mostly, who have been fighting for unrestricted immigration who have also almost invariably been fighting against traditional American values and traditional American culture, and as Saul Alinsky prescribed, using the power of government to do it, using our own laws and our own government against us.
Interesting… Not much being made out of this in any of the news reports from The Usual Suspects.
At the end of December, President Donald Trump, by way of executive order, mandated a 2.4% pay hike for uniformed service members and a 1.9% raise for federal workers. The Trump administration’s initial budget blueprint called for a 2.1% pay increase, while the House and Senate suggested the 2.4% figure, which was eventually adopted by the president.
You you know, watching Democrats operate the last couple of decades, I can’t help but wonder how many of the absentee ballots from the military personnel who got these raises are going to be “misplaced”.
If You Ever Wanted proof that the n-double-acp has long since become a socialist political organization as opposed to a group dedicated to the advancement of colored people as its name suggests, search no further..
The the dream of dr. Martin Luther King will never come to fruition so long as Liberals are running the NAACP.
Keep in mind, folks, this is a Los Angeles Times article. Not exactly a Bastion of right-wing thinking, that.
Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That’s according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income.
The place has been run by liberals forever. They’ve been spending money hand-over-fist on combating poverty, and have succeeded in making the situation worse.
“
California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political price.”
Which, on the national scene, would explain people like Nancy Pelosi perennially getting reelected, as well as the downright stupid politics of places like San Diego, San Francisco and so on.
Like any other third world country, Californians truly believe the Socialist lie… despite the constantly revealed fact that it’s not working for them.
I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve seen in the last couple years, in the Press, how many references to the problem of bullying on local radio and National Television. Hiw many PSAs. It’s all the rage being worried about bullying.
Time was, you handled the bully by standing up to them. Knocking them on their butt a couple of times. It usually solved the problem. Trouble is, we are in such an age of sensitivity anymore that that ceases to become an option. At least, According to some.
It seems to me that America is just coming to grips with the realization that what we’re dealing with from the left is bullying. Ironic since it’s the left pushing the idea that bullying is a bad thing.
Writing in City Journal, Andrew Clavin makes an excellent point;
Nothing scandalizes a leftist like the truth. Point out that women and men are different, that black Americans commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, that most terrorist acts are committed by Muslims, and the Left leaps to its collective feet in openmouthed shock, like Margaret Dumont after a Groucho Marx wisecrack. This is racism! This is sexism! This is some sort of phobia! I’m shocked, shocked to find facts being spoken in polite company!
No one is really shocked, of course. This is simply a form of bullying. The Left has co-opted our good manners and our good will in order to silence our opposition to their bad policies. The idea is to make it seem impolite and immoral to mention the obvious.
The bullying is highly effective and very dangerous. In England, in the city of Rotherham, at least 1,400 non-Muslim girls, some as young as 11, were brutally raped by Muslim immigrants over a period of years in the 2000s. Police and other officials worked to keep the facts hidden because, according to multiple reports, they were afraid of being called racist. Think about that: police officers did not want to seem racist, so they stood by and let their city’s children be raped. The same thing goes on in other cities in England and throughout Europe. And in fact, some who have spoken out have had their careers curtailed by manufactured scandal. The message is clear: it’s just not nice to tell the truth. It’s just not done. Don’t do it.
The emphasis in the above is mine to make my point. He goes on…
Enter President Donald Trump. He is a rude and crude person. He speaks like a Queens real estate guy on a construction site. And because he does not have good manners, he thoughtlessly breaks the rules with which the Left has sought to muzzle those who disagree with them. In this regard, I frequently compare Trump to Randle Patrick McMurphy, the loudmouthed, ill-mannered roustabout from Ken Kesey’s brilliant novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. McMurphy comes into an insane asylum controlled by a pleasant, smiling nightmare of a head nurse named Ratched. Nurse Ratched, while pretending to be the soul of motherly care, is actually a castrating, silencing tyrant. Her rules of good manners, supposedly fashioned for the benefit of all, are really a system of mental slavery. All of McMurphy’s salient character flaws suddenly become heroic in the context of her oppression. Only his belligerent ignorance of what constitutes good behavior can overturn the velvet strangulation of her rule.
Another example can be found in recent real life. The little gargoyle in North Korea claiming he’s got a nuclear button on his desk. Can this be interpreted as anything but the act of a bully?
And how do you respond to a bully? As Trump did. You get in his face. Something this by suggesting he had a bigger button on his desk and one that actually worked. Abracadabra, within 24 hours the only fat male in North Korea was on the phone with South Korea ready to negotiate.
And of course the left who’s President Clinton set this up by providing nuclear weapons to North Korea starts acting offended. It’s unpresidential, we are told. Even though the monster bully it was precisely the response required to deal with the situation. Almost like the left didn’t want that situation dealt with.
. I’m sorry that it takes someone like Trump to break the spell of silence the Left is forever weaving around us. I wish a man like Ronald Reagan would come along and accomplish the same thing with more wit and grace. But that was another culture.”
I’m not sure I agree with the last crack about another culture, but certainly the culture has been altered by the left and it’s constant bulkying to silence anyone who dares speak conservative values. it’s ironic that the left who is complaining so bitterly about Trump were actually the ones that made someone like him necessary.
Glenn Reynolds who also notes the Andrew Klavan article,agrees, saying:
I’m amused when people who’ve spent 50 years declaring the very concept of decency repressive and outdated suddenly start with the “have you no decency?” shtick. When Joseph Welch used that phrase, it was pretty much Peak Decency, or as we’re now told, a horrible regressive time of racism, homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia.
Indeed.
I have been saying it for over a year now…. Where Trump is wrong I will hand him his head verWherebally. On the other hand where Trump is correct I will praise him for being so.
The left is having cold water splashed on its face, bringing it back to reality. That’s really what it’s complaining about at this point. This isn’t about Trump per se, this is in reality about anyone who dares call the left on what they’ve been doing for the last hundred or so years.
The way to handle a bully is to get in their face.
Ummmm…. Yeah. 
I’m going can make the daring request of you the reader, to react to these writings with a thinking brain instead of a jerking knee. They’re going to require active participation of brain cells. I understand fully that this leaves the majority of leftists out entirely, but there really isn’t a great deal I can do about that.
I have watched the latest bedwetting coming from the left about comments from president Donald Trump about certain third world countries. The phrase used most often is the now much hackneyed and wildly inaccurate word,” racist”.
Before you start this missing that point, it’s time to consider the success of people like Justice Clarence Thomas, dr. Thomas Sowell, Condoleezza Rice, dr. Ben Carson, and so on. If race and racism was really the issue, how would these people have succeeded?
I have often enough said that 99% of what gets passed off as racism these days in particular by the left the most often involves instead culture.
Ponder the idea that we get the government we deserve. That often used phrase gets used most often when we have conservatives in power, and it gets used by liberals who can’t understand why anyone would disagree with liberal politics.
Thing is there is some truth to the matter, human beings do deserve the government that they get. Or more correctly, our culture deserves the government it gets, as do most cultures.
With that in mind, a couple questions:
1: Who invented the concept of government?
2: What purpose would that entity have had in such creation?
One way we can answer those two questions at once, would be to look at what existed as the most powerful force before government was invented, and therefore what was the most likely inventor of government: CULTURE.
If we make the logical assumption that governments were originally created by the individual cultures, then it follows that each culture constructed their respective governments in their own image… governments that best reflected and advanced each culture’s interests.
The original purpose of government, therefore, is to protect, nurture and defend, and if possible expand the influence of, the culture that gave it life. As such, to the greatest of degrees possible, each government’s laws, on the whole, were the culture, codified. It follows, then, that any government holding to the original purpose of government will perform this task.
Now, notice I said to the greatest degree possible. I freely admit… Trumpet, even, that there are no perfect governments, no perfect laws. No law, or government can ever capture in amber, a culture. Cultures are far more complex than any law, however written, can encompass. So it is that laws cannot be the end-call and be-all to a culture, or to a country. Laws when taken too literally and made to apply to all events uniformly, can instead of being just, will instead dispense injustice. It is said that in hell, there will be law and policy and little else. Yet, this imperfect tool did at least manage to provide a mechanism toward the intended purpose… The furtherance of the culture that founded said government. This understanding that there is imperfection in government implies that other values should supersede governmental power when the tool of government doesn’t fit the task at hand well. I submit the highest value applied here should be the values of the culture, not that of the law.
(Which, I would argue is why there are judges which read not only the wording of the laws but then intent of them.)
Now, I hear some of you balking at this, suggesting the right of the individual are paramount; a noble sentiment. But consider this immovable fact:
Rights are not universal.
Yep. That’s what I said…Read it again, just to be sure.
Rights are not universal.
Clearly, this will raise many questions on the part of some. This should answer most;
When Jefferson wrote that “WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT” he was not speaking a universal truth at all. The operative word in that phrase is “WE”.
Rather than talking about a universal point of view, a universal truth, if you will, he was instead talking about the point of view of WE the new American culture. With this angle, many of the long-held myths about rights tend to disappear.
Consider; if it was in fact a universal truth that all men were created equal, it wouldn’t have been such a radical idea, for the time, much less then to now. Last I checked, it is quite true that a vast majority still do not consider these as any kind of truth, universal or otherwise; they consider them to be anything BUT self-evident. Royalty still exists, as do class structures, and slavery, as well.
Again, I say…Jefferson was speaking of the point of view of OUR culture, not that of others.
The fact of the matter is that RIGHTS ARE A CULTURAL CONCEPT, and are nigh on meaningless outside that construct. Once the culture is allowed to fall to the law, even in an attempt to impose rights where they do not exist, what happens to real rights, which are a cultural concept?
When one says “freedom”, the question should be ‘freedom from what’? The answers that come back will invariably be cultural in nature. They do not make any sense outside that environment.
As I’ve said, the law and government has been abused by some, it has moved away from that intended purpose of supporting the existing culture. They are in fact being used by the left to alter that morality, to alter that culture, and when that happens, the fall of the government cannot be far behind… and the fall of the culture itself beyond that, becomes a larger possibility. Often as not, the downfall of that culture is what they have in mind.
That said, Culture is by far a more powerful force than government, over time. Indeed; Where governments have gotten themselves into problems over the centuries, is invariably where governments have tried to alter the culture artificially, by means of law. Culture eventually triumphs.
Take communism, as an example. Communism attempts to over-ride the culture and basically outlaw many facets of it.
But, (and this is important) everywhere you saw Communism.. Russia, Cuba, Korea, East Germany you saw the same treacherous *political* ideology, not the cultural values of those societies. And in those places where communism has been overthrown, the former USSR for example, the original culture invariably springs back to life.
This affects the concept of what is being called Multi-culturalism, as well. Governments that seek to mandate multi-culturalism do not last. Again, the USSR is a fair enough example.
Now, some would, because of those abuses as I mentioned, like to see all governments fall. They feel that governments have no legit purpose. I suggest this is short-sighted, and seeks, in the case of our republican form of government, to remove the only tool available to the end of supporting rights.
The worst of the abusers of government in our country, our culture, given these original purposes, are on the left end of the spectrum. The most visible American mainstream political group that works against these original purposes of government are the Democrat Party.
So if it’s true that Americans deserve the government they get, don’t other cultures as well? Blaming the governments in third world Nations, to a large degree when the culture that placed that government in power is so totally deficient is at the very least inaccurate problem identification from which proper problem rectification will never come.
This is why the massive influx of immigration both illegal and illegal from third world countries has been such a problem for so many Americans.
It’s not racism we’re talking about here, it’s the refusal of said immigrants to be assimilated into American culture.
If we observe closely we will find that the majority of the problems in the countries that these immigrants left were caused by the cultural values embraced there. Does it make sense to assume that these people are going to flourish on their own in an American society that doesn’t insist on dropping the culture and the values that made the places they left the hell hole that they are… When they bring with them the very reason that there former country was so problematic?
Moreover, what happens to our country and our culture when they bring their problematic cultures with them, particularly in the politically correct context of all cultures being equal?
The culture we have gets destroyed. That in fact is the goal of multiculturalists. And importantly, if you skip up a couple of paragraphs you’ll notice I’ve already asked, what happens to the rights that that culture provides? Is it any wonder that the Believers government are about diluting the American culture and its Independent nature?
Look, Donald Trump was not my guy either, but let’s face it… the reason that the left and so many of the leadership of these hellhole countries are taking such great exception to the president’s statement is because they’re not used to dealing with somebody that actually tells the truth. Why do you think so many of them were backing Hillary Clinton for the White House?
Fatal occupation injuries for 2016: women, 387; men, 4803. source, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I find it amusing that gender feminists harp on their cherished seventy cents on the dollar fable, but are totally oblivious on the job deaths. Now if we only just had more female lumber Jills and truck drivers we might achieve parity in both statistics. Don’t hold your breath.
John McCain joins J. Forbes Kerry a traitor nominated to run for President, from Breitbart:
The founders of the controversial opposition research firm Fusion GPS admitted that they helped the researcher hired to compile the infamous, largely discredited 35-page dossier on President Donald Trump to share the document with Sen. John McCain.
The goal of providing the dossier to McCain, the Fusion GPS founders explained, was to pass the information contained in the questionable document to the U.S. intelligence community under the Obama administration.
The disclosure raises questions about whether McCain knew that the information he delivered to the intelligence community was actually an opposition document reportedly funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
McPain either sold out or he was duped. In neither case is he fit to serve.
President Donald Trump is actually upholding his oath of office and enforcing federal law as written, from Breitbart:
President Donald Trump’s deputies are ending the often-extended ‘TPS’ temporary refugee status for up to 200,000 El Salvadoran migrants, which was first granted when earthquakes hit their home country in 2001.
In response democrats have soiled their nappies, Senator Tom Carper(D – Delaware), Twitter:
The El Salvadorans living in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status are contributing members of our communities. This decision will force them to live in the shadows.
More Carper, Twitter:
The Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for El Salvador breaks with our country’s moral obligation to care for our neighbors who desperately need our help and safe refuge.
Mini bio, Bing:
Tom Carper
United States Senator
Thomas Richard Carper is the senior United States Senator from Delaware, serving since 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, Carper served in the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 1993
A note from Department of Homeland Security(via Breitbart):
Only Congress can legislate a permanent solution addressing the lack of an enduring lawful immigration status of those currently protected by TPS who have lived and worked in the United States for many years. The 18-month delayed termination will allow Congress time to craft a potential legislative solution.
Aside to Senator Carper, if United States has some moral obligation to allow foreign nations from El Salvador to permanently pose as refugees* for some seventeen years, almost as long as you have been in the Senate, why have you never done anything to end your so-called moral problem? After all almost two years your party had complete control of both Congress and the White House, passed any law they saw fit, the stimulus, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank. Why did you then do nothing?
[*] How many, if any, of these some 200,000 El Salvadorans are actually refugees, in that they immigrated after the hurricane, and not before?
From Townhall:
Brenna Lewis, SLA’s[Students for Life of America] Appalachian regional coordinator, recorded one of the encounters in early December with a young man who said he had no problem with aborting two-year-old babies. Click here to watch the entire video.
“The fact of the matter is without communication, we have no way of knowing of you are sentient or not,” the unidentified student said. “It’s no different than this tree. It’s alive, but is it sentient? I don’t know. I cannot communicate with it.”
Sure looks like communication to me. What say you?
File under: Libtards, Infanticide
It’s bitter cold in parts of the US, but climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis.
It is colder than a polar bear dip and all Algore can cite is the scientific fraud Dr. Michael Mann, from Power Line:
Michael Mann is one of the most partisan advocates for the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory. He is controversial for several reasons: he invented the “hockey stick” graph, which was intended to show that recent warming trends were unprecedented, and has since been exposed as a hoax that misrepresents historic temperatures. He has fought bitterly to prevent his own emails from being discovered in litigation, even though he is a public employee whose research is lavishly funded by taxpayers. He has participated in some of the dishonest “tricks”–their word–by which climate alarmists have kept billions of dollars in government money flowing their way.
Wry note, when the weather gets hot or stormy, most global warming scare mongers claim that is proof of anthropogenic global warming. On the other hand, when the temperature gets cold, they claim the science is complicated. Not so Algore, it all carbon, all the time.
A short while ago I wrote an article with regards to the new tax Arrangement that was just passed by Congress.
In it, I said:
Now Ponder this. For all of the screeching about tax the rich, what this comes down to is the higher-income people’s in those States who find themselves unable to write off their state-level taxes to the federal government and there for the rest of the country are the ones that are hit the hardest and the ones that are currently screeching the loudest.
Apparently they don’t want to tax the rich after all.
On Facebook in one of the discussion threads where I posted that link, I added this…
If you think I’m exaggerating that situation, watch closely the actions of Cuomo the Lesser over these next few weeks and months. He has long made it clear that he’s been trying to get into the White House and that he’s quite willing to use taxpayer dollars to buy his way in. This tax bill is a serious roadblock to that end.
So now here comes Andrew the Lesser, doing exactly what I said he’d do.
Make no mistake, they’re robbing the blue states to give money to red states,” Cuomo said during his State of the State speech in Albany Wednesday. “It is an economic civil war. It is illegal and we will challenge it in court as unconstitutional.”
Only a stone-cold liberal would consider people paying their own taxes to be unconstitutional.
Cuomo, who described the Trump presidency as “the most hostile federal administration in history,” said the changes to state and local tax deductions in the bill will raise New Yorkers’ property and income taxes by at least 20 percent. The governor added that New York state already contributes $48 billion more annually to the federal government than it gets back.
…and there it is folks. What Cuomo doesn’t tell you of course is that New York puts more into the federal treasury than it gets back because it’s a wealthier state. The people in it are wealthier. Isn’t one of the big deals in the Democrat party today, taxing the rich because they’ve got more?
And of course the solution that Cuomo never mentions is actually cutting spending by that 20%. And I will guarantee you it’s the solution that most people would opt for given the choice.
Again, I say…
Democrat politicians aren’t happy with this plan for two reasons. First to forestall rioting they’re going to have to start cutting back on their lavish spending.
And they really don’t want to tax the rich anyway because that’s where the Democrat donors are.
For the record, I view removing the write- off from the state taxes to be a very positive thing. Unmask the amount of spending that the state is doing, by insisting that the people pay for those High tax states upfront. Good.
I figure the spending will end up being cut rather dramatically when there’s a few hundred thousand torches around the State houses in democrat-run states. Such things have a tendency of focusing the attention. And I’m afraid that little else will.
