Good Morning!
Still waiting for Christmas Spirit to kick in, because I need it…
1 Plus it gives too much power to John McCain...No major tax bill, indeed no major bill at all, should be passed without at least some bi-partisan participation and support. This isn’t democracy, but some kind of freakish distortion of it, created by incremental irresponsible acts over time by too many politicians to name. I have my own favorite culprits, Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid prominent among them, but assigning blame can be left to objective historians, if there are any. Right now, what the U.S. desperately needs is a leader with sufficient courage and credibility to force both parties not merely to a table but to a serious and dedicated colloquy, with the objective of signing the equivalent of a peace treaty.
I cannot imagine who such a unifying figure might be, or if one can even exist in a culture where the likes of Jimmy Kimmel is accorded moral authority by a disturbing large segment of the population.
2. Bart Simpson would be proud…no, confused, actually. The latest effort to poison every last public refuge from toxic politics comes from the Right, which is encouraging the jerks among them to troll Starbucks in a variation of the old House of Pancakes gag we used to pull in college when we were drunk. (It also was a running bit on “The Simpsons.”) Starbucks writes the customer’s name on the holiday cups of their ridiculously priced concoctions, so the idea is to force the baristas at the openly progressive coffee shops to place the phony name TRUMP MAGA in view and actually announce it OUT LOUD.
At least the IHop prank names were funny, if you had the sense of humor of a 12-year old. ” I have a reservation for a Hugh Jass!” Bart used that one on poor Moe, too.
Supposedly this is payback from conservatives for Starbucks eliminating religious Christmas imagery from their cups, and this year adding what have been called “lesbian hands,”
….further defiling the holiday. I’m not kidding. People are actually complaining about the hands.
I think I’m going back to bed.
3. RIP, you idiot. And you thought Bowe Bergdahl was bad. Yesterday Lifetime Ethics Dunce Charles Jenkins died at the age of 77. In January of 1965, when he was a 24-year-old army sergeant, Jenkins got drunk and went AWOL while on patrol near the Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea. His idea was to avoid service in Vietnam, so he decided North Korea was a good place to go. Good plan! As his New York Times obituary reports with amusing understatement, “He quickly realized he had made a terrible mistake.”
Jenkins finally emerged from his self-imposed hell in 2004, after being abused, tortured and beaten. While being held in North Korea, he married a Japanese woman who had been kidnapped by North Korean agents, and had two children. The family lived in a Pyongyang home that usually had no heat during the cold Korean winters, growing their own vegetables and raising chickens to supplement their meager food rations. Jenkins never got back to the U.S., though he was court martialed by the U.S. military in Japan. As Roy Hobbs says in “The Natural,” some mistakes you never stop paying for.
And some mistakes are so stupid that this is completely appropriate and just.
4. Climate change porn from National Geographic. Last week National Geographic distributed a video of a skeletal polar bear staggering across a snow-free field, encouraging viewers to see the suffering animal as a victim of climate change and a harbinger of horrors to come. The video set off a viral wave of anger at “climate change deniers,” who obviously hate polar bears. Unfortunately for everyone, this is the dishonest, deceptive and emotional level at which climate change advocacy is being waged now. Not that it will dissuade the weeping hoards, but several arctic scientists have criticized the video as misleading as well as manipulative.
Jeff Higdon, a wildlife biologist who has been working in the Canadian Arctic for more than a decade, expressed his objections on Twitter as well as on Slate, which is not exactly Fox News. During summertime, parts of the Arctic are often free of ice, and that’s normal seasonal change. Indigenous animals starve to death all the time, for a many reasons. “We may start to see more over time, but at this point, there’s no evidence I’m aware of that we’re seeing that [due to climate change],” Higdon said.
He thinks the bear was dying of bone cancer or some other disease. He argues that National Geographic should have asked the local conservation officials to euthanize the animal and then determine what was wrong with him. Ah, but that would risk discovering that it wasn’t climate-change caused starvation, and a great opportunity to advance a policy argument based on powerful but phony information would have been lost.
5. A Jumbo!... Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the longest-serving woman in the House, told private a Democratic Caucus meeting on sexual harassment in Congress that some congresswomen and staffers dress so inappropriately that their clothing is “an invitation” to sexual harassment, reported Politico, saying,
“I saw a member yesterday with her cleavage so deep it was down to the floor. And what I’ve seen … it’s really an invitation.”
It’s only an invitation to someone inclined to sexually harass women, Congresswoman. If clothing is an invitation, then so is a sexually attractive manner, a fit figure, a lovely face, a pleasing voice, and a friendly smile. Since there is no excuse for sexual harassment in the workplace, and since ethical people don’t use the workplace as a dating bar, this comment is exactly the same as arguing that people who have ostentatious homes are inviting burglary, and those driving nice cars are asking to be carjacked.
Kaptur endorsed dress codes, and I agree with that, but to promote professional demeanor and conduct generally, not to avoid triggering harassment. After her blame-the-victim comment was criticized as being a blame-the-victim comment, Katpur earned her Jumbo (“Elephant? What elephant?”) by denying that she meant that women are to blame for the harassment they receive.
Ethics Alarms 
Before you go back to bed I’ve got an unethical asshole we can condemn from both sides of the aisle.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42344180
Marcy Kaptur, despite her ridiculous comments about “immodest dress” (envy?) has done some good things in the House: Her part in getting the WW2 monument funded is commendable and unlike Maxine Waters, she seems thoughtful in many of her positions. I’d gladly share an alcoholic beverage with her if for some strange reason she comes to California.
4- “The video set off a viral wave” of Donate Now activity, which was clearly its intent, am I right?
It’s not outside the realm of possibility that some Ursus Maritimus, (currently in the throes of a devastating population increase of ~ 550 % since the 1950’s) may succumb to the ravages of…overcrowding.
“92% Of Polar Bear Subpopulations Stable, Increasing…Inuit Observe ‘Too Many Polar Bears Now’”
http://notrickszone.com/2017/12/07/2-new-papers-92-of-polar-bear-subpopulations-stable-increasing-inuit-observe-too-many-polar-bears-now/#sthash.teGHj2Yx.dpbs
The Inuit? Hah, whadda they know, they’re a bunch of Science Deniers!
http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-05-14
It gets worse.
Cristina Mittermeier, co-founder of SeaLegacy (the video’s supplier), tells CBC Radio why they filmed the incident and released the video. SHE ADMITS TO USING THIS POOR BEAR AS A SERENDIPITOUS PHOTO OP TO ILLUSTRATE THE **FUTURE FATE SHE IMAGINES** for all bears. (bolds/caps mine)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/11/starving-polar-bears-are-the-fake-news-face-of-climate-change/
Dr. Susan Crockford, whose life’s work is studying Polar Bears. was attacked by True Believers for straying from the narrative
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/07/an-interview-with-dr-susan-crockford-on-the-harvey-et-al-attack-paper/
Jack wrote, “Still waiting for Christmas Spirit to kick in, because I need it…”
I’m right with you Jack.
#1 “no major bill at all, should be passed without at least some bi-partisan participation and support.”
I completely agree!
“Right now, what the U.S. desperately needs is a leader with sufficient courage and credibility to force both parties not merely to a table but to a serious and dedicated colloquy, with the objective of signing the equivalent of a peace treaty.”
A different way of thinking about this would be that a real leader would not have to “force” the parties to the table, a real leader would lead them to the table.
In the political environment we have these days, one that has been intentionally poisoned for years and years, the word bi-partisan in DC is taboo.
#2 “Supposedly this is payback from conservatives for Starbucks eliminating religious Christmas imagery from their cups, and this year adding what have been called “lesbian hands,”
When are people going to realize that focusing on petty things, like what’s printed on Starbucks cups, is absolutely absurd and obsessive behavior. This kind of behavior adds fuel to the fire of the social justice warriors that are trolling the public; the exact same thing can be said about the sophomoric names on the cups. Some things could and should be ignored.
#3 I have zero sympathy for members of the United States military that walk away from their assigned post/patrol and defect. SGT Jenkins was afflicted with a kind of stupidity that’s not fixable. He got his comeuppance. SGT Jenkins made his choices, good riddance.
#4 The climate change porn is just more of the propaganda tools used to try and shame the public to get in line, it really is just about all these “settled science” believers have left in their arsenal. The scientific predictions have put their “settled science” in the same historic prediction rubbish piles as the Y2K absurd predictions. Why is it that so many people have closed off their minds to the lessons in the story The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
Based on historical records, climate is constantly changing and we are and have been in another mild warming trend. The point of contention is that the climate alarmist say that the activities of man are causing or going to cause the climate to change a lot faster than “normal” and a climate apocalypse is imminent – the climate alarmist have not proven their claims.
#5 Maybe Rep. Marcy Kaptur thinks women should dress in burqas and publicly humiliate any woman that dares to expose any of their skin in public or dress in anything that conforms to the shape of a woman’s body.
”Y2K absurd predictions.”
Prepare for the real deal…Y3K…
uhhh, nope. We already fixed all the three digit year programming errors. No, the next one will be 2048, because of the power of two and and lack of further bits…
Slick; I don’t know about you, but after I unexpectedly made it past 12/12/12, I feel like I’m playing with house money!
Actually:
January 19, 2038 for 32-bit systems that allow for negative time values.
February 7, 2106 for 32-bit systems that cannot go earlier than 1970.
With nearly 20 years left to go fully 64-bit, it is my professional opinion that we have nothing to worry about.
I’m honestly more worried about computers that erroneously do NOT skip February 29, 2100–which is NOT a leap year.
–Dwayne
Make an inside joke, get an engineer to play straight man…
The “outrage” over the red Starbucks cups last year (or 2 years ago, I forget) was just about as good an example of “fake news” as you can have. There was like one person on YouTube, virtually no one else cared except the media. I’d be surprised if any significant segment of the population cares about these new cups either.
Starbucks’ coffee lost in a blind taste-test against McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts, it’s criminally overpriced for what it is, and the goofy CEO hates half you reading this. I don’t need another reason to support my local not-Starbucks instead.
5- Jumbo? I’ve clicked on it a couple of times to no avail.
If it is what I think it is, would the following qualify?
”Clinton whistleblower (Dr. Dean Lorich,) dies of ‘suicide’ with knife in chest.”
https://thehornnews.com/murder-clinton-whistleblower-found-knife-chest/
The frequency of suicide victims that stab themselves in the chest? “Self-stabbing is an uncommon method of suicide”
Perhaps he didn’t use a bench press?
“As a whistleblower to the inadequate response to the Haitian earthquake, Lorich was fiercely critical of the Clinton Foundation’s efforts on the ground. (bolds mine)
”Lorich made original appeals directly to Hillary Clinton herself, WikiLeaks revealed this summer. The emails were forwarded to Hillary by her then-Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, in which Lorich warned that he had no choice but to take his complaints public.”
Hmmm!
The link is fixed. Mystified as to what happened. (Jumbo is also a tag, and can be found to your left. It is essentially an example of someone denying what is in plain sight and cannot be ignored or denied.
“Be bad enough thugs, and you’ll never get bad press.” -ME
Fake news, Paul. Lorich never mentioned the Clinton Foundation nor was he ever in contact with Hillary Clinton.
https://www.snopes.com/surgeon-clinton-foundation-corruption-haiti/
YIKES! I have no idea why the Jumbo link went crazy and gabbed a whole paragraph, but it’s fixed now. My apologies.
4. Is such bullshit. Since the 1970’s conservationists have been unable to find even a localized polar bear population that’s actually on decline. Depending on where you look, numbers have either remained basically flat, or tripled.
And there’s a good reason for that: We’ve made it illegal to hunt them. Polar bears are huge, long lived carnivores that reproduce slowly. So long as we aren’t actively killing them, they’re apparently able to thrive under current conditions. Period. “Population Trend: Unknown” my ass, they don’t WANT to know, because it’s inconvenient.
Back in 2010, this came out:
http://e360.yale.edu/features/for_hudson_bay_polar_bears_the_end_is_already_in_sight
“e360: The population now is about how many?
Derocher: It’s just a little over 900.
e360: And 30 years ago it was eleven or twelve hundred?
Derocher: That’s correct, yes. A little over twelve hundred.”
[…]
“Derocher: The worst-case scenarios are that this population could be gone within the decade. A more optimistic scenario would say that we’ll bounce between good years and bad years for several decades to come. Everything that we can see about the sea ice in western Hudson Bay suggests that it’s going to disappear sooner rather than later… The question is, will we get a really bad year that knocks the wind out of this population sooner than later? Or will it just sort of bounce along on this long-term decline?”
You know what the population of the Hudson Bay conservation zone is right now? Twelve Hundred.
Then they’ll say, “Well, yes. Polar bear populations are generally on the increase, but we’re concerned about their general health, polar bears aren’t growing to the same size they used to, and the population as a whole loses about 20 pounds of mass per bear per decade.”
Maybe individual, local populations, especially ones on seasonal ice, but meanwhile there are polar bears in Russia so morbidly obese they can barely walk. The fact of the matter is that anyone with access to actual data is inherently biased on this issue. Literally no one spending time up North accumulating raw data is doing so without some kind of skin in the game as far as climate change is concerned, it bothers me that while there really isn’t any opposition research being done, the data still isn’t even approaching conclusive.
Now the originator of the video is saying that the point was that this was what all polar bears could be facing if we don’t address climate change, and not that this particulat bear was the victim of climate change.
Oh. Funny that this is not how all those who circulated it took it, or how it was reported.
”there are polar bears in Russia so morbidly obese they can barely walk.”
Fat-shaming them can’t be productive…
I laughed, and now I feel bad about it. Damn you.
”I laughed,”
Laugh & the world laughs with you…which is to say, yer not alone.
“ ‘The polar bears on Svalbard is round and full, thanks to a good [ice year] and good hunting opportunities.’ And ‘… Polar bears were fat, many looked like pigs‘, says polar researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute, Jon Aars to the High North News.” (bolds mine)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/15/the-polar-bear-gate-saga-how-a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-lies-paul-nicklen-and-michael-mann-vs-susan-crockford/
Ursus Maritimus Porcus?
1. The Democrats have decided to wage a non-violent civil war to depose the duly elected President. (The texts from senior FBI personnel are, IMO, a smoking gun).
Ironically, the Democrats now see the Alabama race as a vindication of their dishonorable tactics of race-baiting and #resistance.
There is no peace to be had, not under present conditions. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
There’s no peace beyond the line.
“There’s no peace beyond the line.”
Reminds me of that sequence of what used to be fun-loving but are now cruel, sexist, White Supremacist, should-have-been-shouted-down-then-expelled-then-drawn-n-quartered college students in “The Way We Were.”
They, to pacifist Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand): “Any Peace But Katie’s Piece.”
To whom she replied: “Fascists!!”
It has more to do with the habit of colonial powers sending forces out to displace each other from Caribbean islands in the 16’th and 17’th centuries. The English steal an island from the natives, drop a colony, the Spanish push them out, the Dutch show up, claim the same island, the French pop in and try to displace them then another fleet comes down from Havana. And let us not forget the very real and quite numerous pirates.
Whatever deals were in place on the continent at any given time, the new world was something of a free for all. Hence no peace beyond the line.
4. THIS is why the religion of climate change is not credible. If you have to lie, falsify facts, and appeal to emotion instead of reason you lose the debate. Climate Change is a progressive scam designed to transfer wealth to groups progressives favor (while getting rich themselves, in many cases)
”Climate Change is a progressive scam designed to transfer wealth to groups progressives favor (while getting rich themselves, in many cases)”
Oh Ye of little Faith!
Former IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachuari, (a RR Engineer who writes porn novels in his spare time) will have nothing of that.
What will he have some of? Leaving the real scary prediction of the Himalayan Glaciers disappearing by 2035 in the UNIPCC Assessment Report # 4 (AR4).
That the REAL year was 2350 and the IPCC had to embarrassingly withdraw their erroneous claim and apologize is inconsequential.
It accomplished what it was intended to accomplish, securing additional funding in the amount of $500 large for, amongst others, TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute).
TERI Director General? The talented Mr. Pachuari himself.
What are the odds…?
Pachuari replaced the widely respected Bob Watson ~2000 at the behest of a memo from EXXON-MOBIL.
Why? It was determined that Pachuari would be ”friendlier” to business.
Oddly enough, the type of “business” with whom he’d be friendlier is NOT a subject True Believers prefer to address.
Anywho, a Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate (tied to none other than Rajendra K. Pachauri) the TATA [insert raunchy rejoinder] Group, shuttered British Steelmaking concern Corus Redcar, throwing 1700 people out of work.
Why? To cash in on windfall profits of ~$2 billion by selling its carbon credits.
Well, Corus Redcar was an evil polluter after all, and those furloughed workers deserved their fate, am I right?
So, Pachuari really DID cut down on global pollution, so the real GREEN ($) is due recompense for his selfless efforts.
And a grateful Mother Gaia breathes a cautiously optimistic sigh of relief.
Jeff Jacoby published a balanced column about climate change.
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/20620/the-blessings-of-climate-change
It seems to me that telling the counter guy at Starbucks your name is “TRUMP MAGA” accomplishes nothing other than dramatically increasing the odds that your latte will contain a loogie.
I LOVE Starbucks loogies!
Especially in the fall, when you can get a pumpkin spice loogie.
I am a conservative Christian who is disgusted with these calls to ban a company or product for whatever reason. This is a free country, for now, and dang it, I can vote for whom I want and I can go where ever I want with no ones permission. No wonder we are hated and perceived as bigots and whatever name people want to toss out there.
The thing is, I know roughly umpteen bajillion Christians in California, in the South, and all over the country, and I am literally the only one who doesn’t love Starbucks. I have never once heard anyone say a word of complaint about their cups either in real life or in social media. It’s fake news, of the “dispropportionate reporting” variety.