Posted on by

President Biden wants to ‘legalize’ 11 million illegal immigrants, when 17½ million Americans can’t find the jobs they need If you voted for Joe Biden because he was a nicer guy than Donald Trump, then you also voted for this

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 158,659,000 Americans with jobs in January of 2020, but only 150,031,000 in January of 2021. That’s a loss of 8,628,000 jobs. Despite the “civilian noninstitutionalized adult population” increasing from 259,502,000 to 260,851,000, or 1,349,000 souls, the labor force, meaning people who are either working or looking for work, decreased by 4,295,000, meaning that over four million people got too discouraged to look for work. The “not in labor force” adult population increased by 5,643,000 people, from 95,047,00 to 100,690,000.

The total number of unemployed, even by the BLS U-3 measure, leapt from 5,796,000 to 10,130,000, or 4,334,000.

The “official” unemployment rate was reported to be 6.3%, which doesn’t sound too bad I suppose, but, quite frankly, I see U-3 as a way to under-report to the American people just how bad the economy is. Former Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnunchin thought that U-5, “Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force,” was the better number to use.[1]Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work … Continue reading I prefer U-6 as the best number, which includes everyone in U-5, plus those who are employed part-time, but want full-time work and cannot get it.

U-5 currently stands at 7.4%, while U-6 is a whopping 11.1%.

Doing the math, U-5 reports 1,768,000 people who want jobs, but have been too discouraged to look hard, while U-6 tells us that there are roughly 5,950,000 people who are working part-time only because they can’t find full-time work.

And that’s why this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer pisses me off so much:

Biden, Democrats unveil bill that would overhaul path to citizenship for millions

by Alexandra Jaffe, Associated Press | February 18, 2021 | 3:48 PM EST

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats proposed a major immigration overhaul Thursday that would offer an eight-year pathway to citizenship to the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally.

The legislation reflects the broad priorities for immigration changes that Biden laid out on his first day in office, including an increase in visas, more money to process asylum applications and new technology at the southern border.

It would be a sharp reversal of Trump administration policies, and parts are likely to face opposition from a number of Republicans. Biden has acknowledged he might accept a more-piecemeal approach if separate major elements could be approved.

“We have an economic and moral imperative to pass big, bold and inclusive immigration reform,” said New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, one of the lead sponsors of the bill, in unveiling it Thursday.

There’s more at the original, but the obvious question is: if we have roughly 17,850,000 Americans who want full time jobs but either can’t find anything but part-time, or can’t find work at all, why would we ‘legalize’ 11,000,000 illegal immigrants to compete with them?

Is there any way that isn’t utter madness?

President Donald Trump probably never saw the economic collapse over the COVID-19 restrictions coming, but he had what he called an “America First” policy. He would never have agreed to make it easier for non-Americans to compete with actual American citizens for jobs, but that’s what his successor is doing. Under President Biden, we will have more Mexicans and Guatemalans and Venezuelans getting jobs that would otherwise have gone to people born in this country, to people who are real American citizens.

And if you voted for Joe Biden, because Donald Trump was an [insert slang term for the rectum here], and Mr Biden was such a nice guy, then you also voted for this!

References

References
↑1 Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.
Posted on by

The editors of the Lexington Herald-Leader and their one-sided OpEd pages

In a short letter to the editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, Jeffrey Bradford of Nashville, Tennessee, said:

I’m a Lexington native who moved to Nashville many years ago. Recently, while visiting family in Lexington, I read the opinion section of your paper and was astounded by how completely one-sided it is (Jan. 31, 2021 edition). Entirely from the left. Yours is the only newspaper I’ve read in recent years — with the possible exception of the New York Times and Washington Post — that completely excludes views from the right. This is odd on two levels: 1. I’m sure your readership is not so monolithic in its political views. 2. You lose all credibility by only publishing one side of the story. That is, your views carry no weight.

I encourage you to strive for a more balanced approach in the future, as I used to read in my hometown paper when growing up here. Not only would it be more intellectually honest, but you might sell more papers.

Reading just one print edition isn’t much of a sample, but a perusal of what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal’s website doesn’t show much diversity of opinion. There is a real question of how in touch the editors are with their readership. I would point out here the Editorial Board’s recent political endorsements:

  • 2020: Joe Biden for President, Amy McGrath Henderson for Senate, and Josh Hicks for 6th District Representative;[1]Notably, the editors endorsed Charles Booker over Mrs Henderson in the Democratic primary, saying that he was the more progressive candidate. Mrs Henderson once said, “I am further left, I am … Continue reading
  • 2018: Amy McGrath Henderson for 6th District Representative
  • 2016: Hillary Clinton for President, Jim Gray for Senate, and Nancy Jo Kemper for 6th District Representative
  • 2014: Alison Lundergan Grimes for Senate, and Elisabeth Jensen for 6th District Representative

All Democrats, and all defeated in Kentucky and in the 6th District. It seems that the Herald-Leader Editorial Board isn’t exactly in tune with the voters of the Commonwealth. Note that the 2016 and 2014 Democratic nominees for the 6th congressional district were political novices, and the editors struggled to find much good reason to endorse them. Representative Andy Barr (R-KY 6th District) beat them both by landslide margins.[2]Dr Malcolm Jewell, one of my political science professors at the University of Kentucky during medieval times, defined a landslide margin as 10% or greater.

In fact, with the exception of the 6th district race in 2018, the editors’ endorsed candidates lost by landslide margins. Even in 2018, with Mrs Henderson outspending Mr Barr $8,274,396 to $5,580,477, she lost 51.0% to 47.8%.

In her Senate campaign, Mrs Henderson raised $94,120,557 and spent $90,775,744 compared to Senator Mitch McConnell’s $71,351,350 and $64,787,889, only to lose 38.2% to 57.8%. As it happens, Mrs Henderson had the lowest percentage total against Mr McConnell of any of his opponents save sacrificial lamb candidate Lois Combs Weinberg in 2002.

Simply put, the editors are completely out-of-touch with their readership. Voters in Lexington are closer to the editors’ views, but once you get outside Fayette County, nope, nowhere close, and the Herald-Leader is a regional newspaper for most of eastern Kentucky.[3]I delivered both the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, just a few years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

I do not expect the editors to change their views. But perhaps, just perhaps, they might consider that their readers are not all from the city, and provide a bit more content for them.

References

References
↑1 Notably, the editors endorsed Charles Booker over Mrs Henderson in the Democratic primary, saying that he was the more progressive candidate. Mrs Henderson once said, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky,” while at a fund raiser in Massachusetts.
↑2 Dr Malcolm Jewell, one of my political science professors at the University of Kentucky during medieval times, defined a landslide margin as 10% or greater.
↑3 I delivered both the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, just a few years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
Posted on by

The Woke-ington Post defends Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams

We noted, four days ago, the firing of Chattanooga librarian Cameron Williams for being boneheadedly stupid burning library books with which he disagreed. Now comes The Washington Post, with their own article on the subject:

A Black Lives Matter activist was accused of burning books by Trump and Ann Coulter. He was then fired from his job.

By Teo Armus | February 17, 2021 | 3:08 AM EST

From the article title alone — and it should be noted that article titles in newspapers are normally written by the editors, not the article authors — you san tell: grab on to a support bar, because this one leans far to the left!

Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams says his instructions were clear enough: The 35-year-old library staffer was supposed to comb through the shelves of his branch in Chattanooga, Tenn., looking for books that were damaged, outdated or untruthful.

Black Lives Matter activist Cameron Williams

We noted Mr Williams’ appearance in the previous article; I can see from where his ‘street name’ of “C-Grimey” comes.

Let me be clear here: I would never hire, for any position involving public contact, anyone who looked like that. Nor would I ever hire anyone with any connection to #BlackLivesMatter. If someone cannot have decent, respectable grooming habits, nope, he doesn’t get hired. And having anyone on your payroll who you know is involved with attempting to defund or harm the police, who has a basically racist attitude — racist from any direction! — is something you do not want. It’s like hiring someone with any sort of “social justice” degree, such as Women’s and Gender Studies; such people are walking, talking discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen. You take their résumés, interview them if you must, and then quietly choose another candidate. The library was hiring someone to help people find books, not someone to push his political opinions on patrons.

The branch managers told employees they could bring home any weeded-out titles, he said. But Williams, a rapper who helped organize demonstrations against police brutality last year, reportedly had other plans for the books he picked out.

After nabbing Ann Coulter’s “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” and Donald Trump’s “Crippled America,” he allegedly set them on fire in his backyard in December, live-streaming the blaze on Instagram, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Last week, the library fired him over the alleged incident, saying that he’d broken the rules by “improperly removing items from the Library’s collections.”

Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams, picture by Mr Williams, taken from The Washington Post.

One point the Post article does not mention is that the library met with the Chattanooga city attorney about this, before taking the decision to terminate Mr Williams. One would assume that the city attorney would have been very careful in advising the library on the legalities. More, the Post article states that, “Before his firing, (Mr Williams) was the only Black man on a staff of about 80 people, he said.” Note that verbiage: Mr Williams was the only black man on the staff; it does not mean he was the only black person employed there. Library personnel tend to be heavily female. Was this poor writing by the Post article author, poor reporting in failing to clarify the situation, or just laziness in taking Mr Williams’ word for it?

That point should have been caught by whichever Washington Post editor reviewed the story. At least I assume the normal practice of editorial review; perhaps such an assumption isn’t a wise one?

The Hitlerjugend burning books, 1938.

Mr Williams provided this picture to the Post. In it, he is shown in what appears to be the library stacks. He’s also wearing a black hoodie, something hardly professional, and a Black Lives Matter facemask. Was he projecting a politicized image while working at the library?

There’s some rather delicious irony when we see the Post publishing sympathetic articles about book-burners. Some things are just not good looks.

The Post’s story is an example of absolutely horrible journalism . . . which seems to be a 21th century trend. We should not be able to discern the writer’s biases by reading what is supposed to be a straight news article, but they are there for all to see. This is what happens when you hire the #woke.

Posted on by

It’s not just the big boys like The New York Times and The Washington Post who don’t like #FreedomOfSpeech for other people Much smaller media like the Lexington Herald-Leader aren't too fond of it either

At The First Street Journal, and William Teach’s The Pirate’s Cove — and Mr Teach has done this site an invaluable service, crossposting because I’ve been under power-cutting ice storm threats for several days now — we have been tireless defenders of the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech. Thus, I was interested enough to read Joel Pett’s OpEd piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader celebrating that free speech pioneer, Larry Flynt.

RIP Larry Flynt: Kentucky native, porn publisher, and First Amendment champion

By Joel Pett | February 15, 2021 | 10:50 AM | Updated 12:50 PM EST

In the gathering gray of an April evening in 2004, I waited alone in the alley behind the Kentucky Theater, uncertain that my guest would show up. Inside, 150 or so attendees of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists annual convention watched a screening of the 1996 drama “The People vs. Larry Flynt.”

The film chronicled the infamous pornographer’s landmark 1988 legal battle with the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, which ended with a unanimous Supreme Court firmly reinforcing our collective right to satirize the powerful. (Even if that satire implies that a renowned religious figure had fornicated with his own mother in an outhouse.) The AAEC had filed a friend of the court brief on Flynt’s behalf.

I didn’t wait long. A standard prom-issue limo slid up next to the loading dock. A couple of well-dressed young men emerged, lifted the gold wheelchair out and positioned it. Out swung Larry Claxton Flynt’s legs, rendered useless by a 1978 assassination attempt and wrapped in an expensive suit. Flynt struggled into position, looked up at me and growled “Goddammit, I hate to f—ing travel!”

Flynt, who died last week at 78, not only won the big First Amendment case, he was a native Kentuckian, making him a natural “get” for the Lexington convention. I had found his office tricky to communicate with, since they made no demands, didn’t need airline tickets (he had his own jet) and handled their own hotel reservations. He had simply barked into the phone, some eight months earlier, “All right, dammit, I’ll be there!”

Mr Pett’s paean to Mr Flynt is somewhat tiresome. Larry Flynt was the extreme test case for the first amendment, just as a vicious, cold-blooded killer is the extreme test for opposition to capital punishment: the concepts one wishes to defend are personified by the worst of people. Mr Flynt’s Hustler magazine went where Playboy and Penthouse did not go, far exceeding them in raunchiness and crudity. Since then, the internet has made much more graphic pornography widely available, often for free, and if there’s anything not available on the internet somewhere, I can’t think of what it would be.

Heck, you can find the basics for building nuclear weapons on the internet!

Mr Pett was unstinting in his praise for the Hustler publisher:

His injuries made speaking a struggle, but Flynt delivered. He animatedly railed against former President George W. Bush, for whom he had a particular dislike. He stayed to answer plenty of questions with grace, wit and humor.

I was a little disappointed that, over dinner, Flynt was considerably less effusive. No matter, he had done his job, sparking soul-searching among our self-important, ponderous, mainstream newspaper cartoonists about First Amendment protections extending to the gratuitous, crude, misogynistic and utterly distasteful smut between the slick covers of porn mags.

I don’t have to like Mr Flynt to agree as far as freedom of speech and of the press are concerned. But, as we’ve sadly noted previously, today’s credentialed media are a lot more supportive of their own First Amendment rights than they are for others.

And so we have Mr Pett’s conclusion:

Larry Flynt once said, “If the First Amendment protects a scumbag like me, then it will protect all of you. Because I’m the worst.”

Maybe. But watching Donald Trump’s outrageous claims to free-speech protection play out last week, some might disagree.

Mr Flynt had done his job, Mr Pett said, “sparking soul-searching among our self-important, ponderous, mainstream newspaper cartoonists about First Amendment protections extending to the gratuitous, crude, misogynistic and utterly distasteful smut between the slick covers of porn mags.” Yet when it comes to the political speech of President Trump, speech with which both Mr Pett individually and the editors of the Herald-Leader in general disagreed, that First Amendment, well, maybe it shouldn’t cover that!

Mr Teach’s blog tagline is, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” It seems to me that today’s credentialed media do not believe in freedom of speech and of the press for those theyn despise.

Posted on by

About that getting rid of fossil fuels?

As Joltin’ Joe Biden and the rest of the #ClimateChange alarmists want you to end your dependency on fossil fuels, perhaps this story from the Austin American-Statesman ought to be in the backs of your minds:

Frozen wind turbines hamper Texas power output, state’s electric grid operator says

Brandon Mulder | Austin American-Statesman | February 14, 2021 | 4:30 PM CST | Updated: February 15, 2021 | 10:11 AM CST

Frozen wind turbine in Texas.

Nearly half of Texas’ installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.

Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend’s freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.

As of Sunday morning, those iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas’ installed wind generation capacity, although those West Texas turbines don’t typically spin to their full generation capacity this time of year.

Fortunately for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s electric grid, the storm’s gusty winds are spinning the state’s unfrozen coastal turbines at a higher rate than expected, helping to offset some of the power generation losses because of the icy conditions

“Some of,” I note. There’s more at the original.

The story continues to tell us that wind generated sparktricity was 23% of the Lone Star State’s generation capacity, but it has to be asked: if the Climate Change policies that President Biden wants to put in place, to transition us to 100% ‘renewable’ carbon-free sources were actually in place, in this miserable February with it’s strong Arctic air mass having borne down upon the Midwest plains states, just how many people would be shivering in their homes right now?

Gas fireplace in my computer room/den.

When we moved to our retirement fixer-upper in July of 2017, it was total electric. In January of 2018, a snow and ice storm hit, and knocked out the electricity. Since we’re out in the country, at pretty much the far end of Jackson Electric Cooperative’s service area, we’re among the last people to get power back, and it took 4½ days. My wife went to Lexington, and stayed at our daughter’s apartment, but I had to stay here, to care for the critters, and the plumbing.

It got down to 38º F in the house.

As I said, our house is an eastern Kentucky fixer-upper, and it certainly isn’t done yet, but we decided that we would have gas in the remodel, because Mrs Pico wanted a gas range. Thus we now have a new gas (propane) range, water heater and the fireplace installed. If we lose power again, we’ll still be able to keep the house warm, cook and take showers.

Without that fossil fuel, the place would become a not-very-much-fun place in the winter when the electricity goes out.

.

Posted on by

Climate Cultist Disha Ravi Arrested For “sedition, promoting hatred among groups and criminal conspiracy”

At the surface, it’s fun for Skeptics to laugh at this climate cultist, but, it’s not quite that simple

India activist Disha Ravi arrested over farmers’ protest ‘toolkit’

A 22-year-old Indian climate activist has been arrested after sharing a document intended to help farmers protest against new agricultural laws.

Police said Disha Ravi was a “key conspirator” in the “formulation and dissemination” of the document.

The “toolkit”, which suggests ways of helping the farmers, was tweeted by prominent activist Greta Thunberg.

Activists say Ms Ravi’s arrest is a clear warning to those who want to show support to anti-government protests.

As the Hindustan Times notes, she’s accused of “sedition, promoting hatred among groups and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).” Anyhow, what are these protests about?

Tens of thousands of farmers have been protesting for more than two months over the laws, which they say benefit only big corporations.

The new legislation loosens rules around the sale, pricing and storage of farm produce which have protected India’s farmers from the free market for decades.

The farmers’ protests mark the biggest challenge India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced. His government has offered to suspend the laws but the farmers want them replaced altogether.

So, the government wanted more free market and less government control of farming and less price fixing. The farmers are not only not good with that, they want even more government involvement in fixing prices and protections. Remember that bit

Ms Ravi, one of the founders of the Indian branch of the Fridays for Future climate strike, was arrested by Delhi police.

In a statement posted on social media on Sunday, police said she had “collaborated” to “spread disaffection against the Indian State”.

It said she was an editor of the document and had shared it with Swedish climate activist Ms Thunberg.

Police have said the toolkit suggested a conspiracy in the run up to a huge rally on 26 January, which saw protesting farmers clash with police.

“The call was to wage economic, social, cultural and regional war against India,” Delhi Police Special Commissioner Praveer Ranjan said earlier this month.

“We have registered a case for spreading disaffection against the government of India – it’s regarding sedition – and disharmony between groups on religious, social and cultural grounds, and criminal conspiracy to give shape to such a plan,” he added.

So, she was instrumental in whipping up the farmers to protest against the government for …. more government, which led to violence in a few cases. That said, should Skeptics support her, at least her ability to organize protests? Because we do support freedom of speech, even though that isn’t quite a thing in India. But, free speech support is free speech support, something the Warmists are against if that speech is considered Wrongthink.

On the flip side, should Warmists be for her arrest, since she was engaged in “anti-government” activities? They are certainly massive Big Government believers, right?

That is all the surface thoughts. The deep thoughts are that these climate cultists are involving themselves and their cult with the concerns of farmers, whipping them up, causing problems, messing up the message of the farmers, all for their cultish beliefs. The protests really had and have nothing to do with the climate change scam.

Posted on by

LOL! A group calling itself Refuse Fascism actually advocates fascism, in seeking to deny the right of the accused to counsel But the left have always had an authoritarian streak to themselves; leftism and liberty are mutually exclusive

The left, so many of whom want to defund the police and emasculate law enforcement, will tell you that everyone deserves an attorney who will vigorously defend them in court.

Unless, of course, the defendant is Donald Trump. Then there’s Hell to pay! From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

From laughs over ‘Philly-delphia’ to vandalism at home, Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen draws backlash

by Jeremy Roebuck | February 13, 2021- 6:53 PM

Philadelphia attorney Michael T. van der Veen has taken a starring role in Donald Trump’s impeachment defense over the last two days — but he’s also incurred backlash.

Vandals smashed windows and spray-painted “TRAITOR” on the driveway of his suburban Philadelphia home Friday night, after he spent hours on the Senate floor hurling partisan invective and testily condemning the former president’s second impeachment trial as “constitutional cancel culture.”

A group of demonstrators with the group Refuse Fascism gathered outside his Center City law office chanting, “When van der Veen lies, what do you do? Convict. Convict.”

There’s more at the original. Another article from the Inquirer noted:

Michael van der Veen hired 24-hour private security for his family after vandals smashed windows and spray-painted “TRAITOR” on the driveway of his suburban Philadelphia home Friday night. He told reporters Saturday he received more than 100 death threats.

And they acknowledged being caught off guard by the level of rancor from Trump’s critics and supporters alike — even given the country’s fiercely divided politics and how other lawyers in his orbit have fared.

“I’ve been representing controversial clients for 30 years, and I’ve never experienced this type of vitriol,” said William J. Brennan, another local member of the team whose past clients include priests accused of sexual abuse and judges facing corruption charges. “We had no political agenda here. We are not partisan warriors. We are criminal defense lawyers who represented a client.”

So far, the Editorial Board has been silent, not condemning the attacks on President Trump’s defense lawyers, but, given the state of the #woke dominating the newsroom and the lack of actual journalism from the Inquirer, I wouldn’t be surprised if the editors remained silent.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees that anyone acused of a crime has the “to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”

The hand-written copy of the proposed Bill of Rights, 1789, cropped to show the text that would later be ratified as the Sixth Amendment. Click to enlarge.

But, apparently the oh-so-tolerant left don’t believe in the Sixth Amendment and the right of the accused to defend himself and have the assistance of counsel. members of the laughably named Refuse Fascism group demonstrated outside of Mr van der Veen’s office:

Refuse Fascism has a logo as part of their Twitter biography, telling us that, “In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse To Accept a Fascist America!” But what would be more fascist than not allowing an accused defendant to have an attorney to defend himself?

This was their tweet:

Of course, were one of the members of Refuse Fascism arrested, he’d be screaming, “Lawyer! Lawyer! Lawyer!” at the top of his lungs.

In American history, we are taught that patriot John Adams served as counsel for the defense in the trial of eight British soldiers accused of murder during a riot in Boston on March 5, 1770, what was called the Boston Massacre, and he won acquittals.

Before we had our independence, before we had our Constitution and the Sixth Amendment, Mr Adams, passionate advocate of freedom, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and second President of the United States, took on the unpopular cause of defending those British soldiers, because he believed that every man deserves a defense, every man has a right to a defense.

That lesson seems to have been lost on the members of Refuse Fascism. Rather, in protesting the attorneys representing President Trump, they are protesting the right to counsel. They are not refusing fascism, but advocating it.

Of course, Refuse Fascism has an absolute right to assemble and advocate anything they wish. But I, too, have the freedom of speech, and the right to point out that Refuse Fascism is itself advocating fascist behavior.

Posted on by

CBS: You Know Polar Vortices Are Not Quite As Extreme Due To ‘Climate Change’ Or Something Climate Broadcasting Sect

Is CBS Columbia Broadcasting System Or Climate Broadcasting Sect? Jeff Beradelli takes a different tact from most Warmists, who are blaming the cold and snow and ice on the melting of the Arctic because you took a long shower followed by a fossil fueled drive to get a burger

Polar vortex brings most extreme winter weather in years

From wind chills near 60 below zero in the Upper Midwest to an ice storm all the way to the Gulf Coast, it is rare that winter weather gets this extreme. The culprit is a polar vortex teaming up a very active jet stream.

That means cold, snow and ice for hundreds of millions of Americans.

On Saturday, more than two-thirds of the nation was under some kind of winter weather alert running the gamut from wind chill warnings in the northern Plains to winter storm warnings for the Pacific Northwest. There were also winter weather advisories in South Texas and ice storm warnings in the Mid-Atlantic.

A few weeks ago, the polar vortex, which is typically located near the North Pole, broke into pieces — a natural occurrence that happens every couple of winters. Smaller daughter vortices scattered around the Northern Hemisphere, bringing pockets of Arctic air to Siberia, Europe and North America.

For the past week, one of the daughter vortices has set up shop, spinning near the U.S.-Canada border. As a result, temperatures have been frigid, at times dropping below -40 degrees Fahrenheit, but the coldest of air has been confined to the far northern U.S. That’s about to change as lobes of the vortex rearrange its orientation, sending cold air south.

So, polar vortices are normal and natural. Except Warmists have been trying to blame them on Mankind, because they want to make sure that they can blame Mankind for their cultish beliefs. They’ve been saying they have become more extreme. Jeff takes it in a different route

Despite being extreme, it’s not nearly as extreme as it could be. Over the past few decades, due to human-caused climate change, the coldest extremes are getting less extreme. As one example, in Minneapolis the coldest day each year is now 12 degrees warmer than it used to be.

And that’s the only example offered, and the attached graphic only goes back to 1970, you know, the time the Earth was in a period where they were worried about a coming ice age. How does UHI and land use come into play? Yes, they are Man-caused, but, not global. Anyhow, these doomsday cultists just can’t help but drag their cult into everything.

Posted on by

Chattanooga #BlackLivesMatter activist fired from public library for burning books by conservative authors

One of the reasons I like to use ‘credentialed media’ sources is so that no one can complain that my sources are evil reich-wing blogs and can’t be trusted. From the ABC News station, Channel 9 in Chattanooga:

Update: Chattanooga Library fires worker who burned library books by conservative authors

“The City of Chattanooga has policies in place to protect the public’s interest, and we follow those directives,” said Library Executive Director Corinne Hill.

by WTVC / Associated Press Sunday | December 6th 2020 | Updated: February 11, 2021

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — UPDATE (February 11th, 2021):

The Chattanooga Public Library announced in an email that Cameron Williams was fired on Wednesday for burning library books.

The email says this came after a February 5th hearing on the matter and after conversations with the City of Chattanooga Attorney.

The release says the investigation wrapped up on December 1st, and determined that Williams “violated City and Library policies by improperly removing items from the Library’s collections.”

Williams admits he burned the books, but claims he did nothing wrong, saying that the books were already set to be removed and that officials told him he could take them.

He says he and his attorney plan to appeal the library’s decision to fire him. See Isaiah Kim-Martinez’s update here.

Black Lives Matter activist Cameron Williams

Further down was what looked like links to previous stories, but had no links embedded, including “Williams previously helped organize protests against police brutality and faces charges of disorderly conduct and blocking a highway stemming from two July demonstrations.”

Let me be clear here: I would never hire, for any position involving public contact, anyone who looked like that. Nor would I ever hire anyone with any connection to #BlackLivesMatter. If someone cannot have decent, respectable grooming habits, nope, he doesn’t get hired. And having anyone on your payroll who you know is involved with attempting to defund or harm the police, who has a basically racist attitude — racist from any direction! — is something you do not want. It’s like hiring someone with any sort of “social justice” degree, such as Women’s and Gender Studies; such people are walking, talking discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen. You take their résumés, interview them if you must, and then quietly choose another candidate.

The only thing that surprises me is that Mr Williams was actually fired. I would have guessed that, in this time of the left trying to censor anything by conservatives, the library would have given him an award!