Witch Trials

As we reach the midpoint of the summer of 2023, the climate catastrophists (a.k.a. Team Apocalypse) will begin to run out of hot weather that they claim is "historic" (it isn't) and a portent of climate catastrophe (it's not). The misleading scarlet red temperature maps (much like the ubiquitous Covid death scoreboards we saw in 2020-2021) appear on virtually every network weathercast (they will disappear in October) along with claims (almost always wrong) that this summer is the hottest in the last n thousand years (you can pick the value of n).

Wow, scary red!! High temps! Oh wait. It's August.

Those of us who take a more nuanced view of climate change and its long term effects are often characterized as "deniers" (just as we were when we criticized the media/government response to Covid—history has already proven that we were 100% correct in that criticism, BTW). The really serious catastrophists use another term—climate criminals—to demonize those who question their climate religiosity. People, machines and fossil fuels that produce the dreaded CO2 are bad—only the virtuous "climate aware" are good.

Funny how the long history of climate change has involved extreme human reactions. Brendan O'Neill writes:

Witch-hunts in mid-millennial Europe were inextricably linked with concerns over climate change. This was the era of the Little Ice Age, the period that roughly spanned from 1300 to 1850 during which the Northern Hemisphere experienced exceptionally cold winters. The impact of the Little Ice Age was devastating. The frigid weather violently disrupted harvests in Europe, especially the grain harvest. Following particularly cold periods in the 1500s, it took 180 years for grain harvests to return to their previous levels. The result, in the words of German historian Philipp Blom, was ‘a long-term, continent-wide agricultural crisis’ (2). And this led to a staggering spike in witch-hunts ...

It is no coincidence that around 110,000 witch trials took place in Europe during those most climatically unstable of centuries, with around half of those trials ending in conviction and execution. [emphasis mine] As the cold, starving peoples of northern Europe knew from the Bible, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, especially a witch with such power that she can conjure storms in which ‘sea and sky became one’. Johann Weyer, the 16th-century Dutch physician who opposed witch-hunting, describes one woman being forced to admit essentially that she had brought about climate change: ‘[A] poor old woman was driven by torture to confess – as she was just about to be offered to Vulcan’s flames – that she had caused the incredible severity of the previous winter (1565), and the extreme cold, and the lasting ice.’ (3)

The cries of those tortured women should echo down the ages. Their persecution for the crime of causing contrary weather should give us pause for thought today. For as German historian Wolfgang Behringer convincingly argues, the weather-related witch hysteria of the early modern period shows how perilous it can be to moralise discussions about the climate. A section of European society during the Little Ice Age held witches ‘directly responsible for the high frequency of climatic anomalies’, he writes. And the ‘enormous tensions created in society as a result of the persecution of [those] witches demonstrate how dangerous it is to discuss climatic change under the aspects of morality’.

Alas, it seems likely that this plea not to moralise discussions about climate will fall on 21st-century ears that are as deaf to reason as were those that ignored Reginald Scot’s insistence that weather was a heavenly phenomenon, not the devilish handiwork of warped human beings. For today, in our supposedly enlightened era, the rush to blame sinning and selfish individuals for ‘contrary winds’, or ‘weather of mass destruction’, as we call it now, is as intense as it was in the Little Ice Age. Weather witch-finding is alive and well.

Sure, we don’t threaten to hurl climate changers into ‘Vulcan’s flames’. We do not ‘thrawn’ them with rope, inducing a ‘pain most grievous’, as was done to poor Mrs Sampson. We don’t even say the word witch anymore. No, we prefer to speak of ‘climate criminals’. ‘Thirteen climate criminals who should be in jail’, as the headline in a radical magazine put it a few years ago. The list included everyone from Donald Trump to Big Oil CEOs to broadcasters like Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson’s crime was a speechcrime – to suggest climate change is a ‘fiction’. For that, he and the other ‘real climate offenders’ should be imprisoned, we were told.

As Team Apocalypse beats its drums ever louder, their intent, it appears, is to convince people to be afraid, very, very afraid. Their hope is that once enveloped with fear, the people will accede to outrageous policies that do little good and cause great harm, but provide members of the Team with substantial authoritarian power. They'll begin slowly, with preposterous bans on gas stoves and insane regulations on pizza joints. But they'll escalate, and when they do, they just might make the trials of the 1600s look like child's play.

UPDATE-1:

Here's a rather snarky take from Steven Kruiser:

The elites in the Climate Cult find it impossible to communicate without hysteria and hyperbole. A morning trip to the toilet is an existential crisis for them. If they can’t make someone feel like eating bugs and/or plunging into the darkest despair after a casual exchange on the street, they feel that they’ve failed humanity.

As a kid in the 1970s, I was constantly told that global cooling and overpopulation were the twin assassins that would soon be finishing off Earth and humanity. Here in the third decade of the 20th century, I’ve lost count of how many extinction events we’ve survived since I was an adolescent. I’m starting to get the feeling that nothing can do us in.

We realists know that the climate fear-mongering is a bunch of garbage. There is a popular belief among many skeptics that all of the climate change gloom and doom types know they’re full of it too.

That is true about some of them.

There are two classes in the Climate Cult: The Grifter Elites and the Brainwashed Faithful.

The Grifter Elites know they’re professional hoaxers. The Brainwashed Faithful — the much larger group — really believe that we’re doomed but we should ruin our lives to maybe make the doom happen just a little later. They’re a confused lot, the Faithful. If the Elites told them to survive on nothing but their own urine because it would reduce greenhouse gasses, they’d all be toasting each other with their tinkle within minutes.

The Elites have allowed the definition of “climate change” to morph so much over the years that it has less meaning than a Gene Simmons groupie encounter in 1985. Now they can use it for things like blaming a 260-million-year-old mass extinction event on it.

The Climate Cult devotees are an annoying and toxic combination of dishonesty and mental instability. As I wrote in my Morning Briefing earlier in the month, climate change hysteria is America’s biggest mental health crisis. I wish I could let them soil their diapers and ignore them, but Democrats keep trying to make taxpayers go broke funding their endless green dream follies.

Team Apocalypse has learned (from the Covid debacle) that if you scare uninformed people sufficiently, they'll do whatever you want, no matter how stupid, unrealistic, or against their own best interest. That why we're experiencing all of this preposterous fear mongering. 

UPDATE-2:

You'd think that Team Apocalypse would worry about jumping the shark, but nah. An unusually hot summer (it's weather, it happens now and then) has driven the climate crazies to dial the fear knob up to 11. Today, The Washington Post tweets the following:

Even those with less scientific knowledge than, say, Greta Thunberg, know that the boiling point for water is 100 deg C. And virtually everyone one that has an IQ of, say, greater than 100 and has not been consumed by climate hysteria probably laughed (or spit out their morning coffee) when they learned that the 'eminent' U.N. has now declared that we're in "an era of global boiling." 

Sorta like the "new ice age" scientists predicted in the 1970s. "Stark" ... very stark. Whatever became of that?

It appears that the climate hysterics won't stop until they've convinced everyone to cower in fear. Then, as I noted in the body of this post, they can begin to introduce authoritarian/draconian policies that make life worse for us all and do NOTHING to modify climate trends that have been ongoing for millions of years.

But those of us who are "deniers" will continue to push back, just like we did during the Covid debacle (Another reminder: History has proven we were 100% correct in our criticism.]. The real question is how much damage to lives and livelihoods will Team Apocalypse do before actual science, a reduction in censorship, and common sense return?

UPDATE-3 (07-30-2023):

Is there anything that climate change (oops, I mean "global boiling" —see preceding Update) can't do? Not if you ask the left-leaning "news" source that is partially funded with our tax dollars, NPR. A recent headline:

"How climate change could cause a home insurance meltdown"

is yet another laugher that tells the gullible that home insurance rates will skyrocket due to wildfires caused by climate change (honest reporting indicates that some of the worst fires were caused by drought, arsonists and a serious lack of forest management, but nevermind. And of course, there's the impact of hurricanes on insurance rates. Hurricanes as we all know are caused exclusively by climate change, except, in the real world, there is little evidence that is the case ... but nevermind.

Team Apocalypse is like the energizer bunny ... it keeps going and going and going—no matter how ridiculous its claims.

UPDATE-4 (07-31-2023):

In an article, aptly titled, "Climate Change Obsession is a Real Mental Disorder," Allysia Finley writes:

... Before the media began reporting on putative temperature records—the scientific evidence for which is also weak—heat waves were treated as a normal part of summer. Uncomfortable, but figuratively nothing to sweat about.

Yet according to a World Health Organization report last year, the very “awareness of climate change and extreme weather events and their impacts” may lead to a host of ills, including strained social relationships, anxiety, depression, intimate-partner violence, helplessness, suicidal behavior and alcohol and substance abuse.

A study in 2021 of 16- to 25-year-olds in 10 countries including the U.S. reported that 59% were very or extremely worried about climate change, and 84% were at least moderately worried. Forty-five percent claimed they were so worried that they struggled to function on a daily basis, the definition of an anxiety disorder.

“First and foremost, it is imperative that adults understand that youth climate anxiety (also referred to as eco-anxiety, solastalgia, eco-guilt or ecological grief) is an emotionally and cognitively functional response to real existential threats,” a May 10 editorial in the journal Nature explained. “Although feelings of powerlessness, grief and fear can be profoundly disruptive—particularly for young people unaccustomed to the depth and complexity of such feelings—it is important to acknowledge that this response is a rational one.”

These anxieties are no more rational than the threats from climate change are existential. [emphasis mine] A more apt term for such fear is climate hypochondria.

Yup, "climate hypochondria" — yet another of the many damaging blunders that can be attributed to Team Apocalypse.

Intervention

Senate Minority Leader, Mitch MCConnell is 81 years old. This past week, during a brief public address, he had a brain freeze—he simply went into a catatonic state and stopped speaking. He was led away from the podium by Senate colleagues, who later claimed it was a big nothing. It. Was. Not. and it's time for him to step down.

Like a number of Democrat politicians, McConnell (R-KY) has reached his expiration date. He is an old man in poor health who suffered from a concussion earlier this year. He should no longer remain in a position to make decisions that could effect the direction of legislation and the future of our country.

For the past three years, we've watched as a cognitively-disabled president exhibits increasing signs of dementia. We've observed a 90-year old Democratic Senator, Diane Feinstein (D-CA), descend into full-blown dementia, and a younger Senator, John Fetterman (D-PA), have trouble speaking in complete sentences. This is not to mention a cadre of 80-plus year olds who roam the halls of the Congress in varying states of mental acuity.

It's long past the time to establish mandatory retirement for all members of Congress and the President and Vice President—say, on their 75th birthday. No exceptions. It also time to establish term limits—say, 3 terms for the senate and 4 terms for the House. There is no reason whatsoever for any elected official to serve for a lifetime. Joe Biden is all the evidence you need to justify that statement.

On the GOP side, McConnell's colleagues should intervene and convince him it's time to leave. If for no other reason than it will accentuate the Democrat's intransigence is not doing the same with Biden or Feinstein or Fetterman. On the Democratic side, Biden, Feinstein and Fetterman's colleagues should do the same, if for no other reason than it will give the Democratic Party a degree of maturity that it sorely needs. I fully understand the political ramifications of this suggestion, but at least once in a while, the people who we elect should at consider doing what is right and in the best interests of the country. I know ... naive.

Will any of this happen—mandatory retirement, term limits or an intervention with cognitively diabled leaders? Not likely. Once the vast majority of politicians in either party tastes power, they (and their staff) will NOT voluntarily give it up.

False

Alex Berenson notes a frightening, but not surprising, polling result:

A majority of Americans - and an overwhelming number of Democrats - no longer support First Amendment protections for free speech.

The government should restrict “false” information online, even if doing so blocks people from “publishing or accessing information,” 55 percent of Americans said in a large poll released Thursday. Only 42 percent disagreed.

The antipathy to free speech represents a sea change in attitudes in just five years. It is driven by a powerful new hostility to First Amendment rights on the left.

In an identically worded poll five years ago, Democrats and Republicans favored free speech online by roughly 3 to 2 margins. Today, Republicans still favor the First Amendment by about that much. But Democrats have turned against it by even more.

The support for government suppression of “false” speech clearly violates the First Amendment, which does not distinguish between “false” and legal speech, or online or traditional platforms for speech and debate.

As I've noted over the past few years, the Left has become increasingly authoritarian and as a consequence, has adopted the primary characteristic of authoritarians—a hatred of opposing views along with the hard facts that conflict with their ideological contentions. These opposing views and conflicting facts are then characterized as "false," which allows the Left to argue that they should be suppressed or censored completely.

The problem with this outrageous position is simple—who determines what is "false" (the Left loves to use the ambiguous term "misinformation") and who enforces the ban on "false" information. Since it's unconstitutional to ban speech, the federal government has worked with private social media sources to do their dirty work for them. This is unethical, yet many Democrats refuse to accept that it happened or applaud the deep state for its efforts to suppress opposing views.

But let's get back to "false," and examine some recent incidents:

• It was "false" to claim that Covid originated in a Chinese bioweapons lab, until it was proven to be the likeliest source of the virus. People who stated the "falsehood" were suppressed, censored, and demonized.
• It was "false" to claim that masks did no good in suppressing the spread of the virus, until it was proven that they did not work. People who stated the "falsehood" were suppressed, censored, and demonized.
• It was "false" to suggest that Hunter Biden's laptop computer was his and not Russian disinformation, until virtually every major news source (even the propaganda media) now admits it provenance. In October of 2020, people who stated the "falsehood" were suppressed, censored, and demonized.
• It was "false" to state that Joe Biden had any knowledge of his son's nafarious dealings with foreign adversaries or that Biden himself somehow benefited financially from those dealings until emails, texts, and whistleblowers indicated the opposite. People who stated the "falsehood" were suppressed, censored, and demonized.

There are hundreds of other "falsehoods" (about race, about climate, about crime, about government) that were NOT false, but in every case, if those "falsehoods" conflicted with the prevailing Democrat narrative, there was an attempt to suppress them. So ... the suppression of free speech has now become a normal part of a prevailing left-wing ideology.

Bottom line: Suppression of opposing viewpoints ultimately leads to bad decisions. Bad decisions lead to damaging government policies. Damaging governmental policies hurt those who are least capable of protecting themselves. And as people suffer the consequences of these policies (due to high prices, over-regulation, authoritarian lockdowns and mandates, etc.) the world become a nastier, chaotic place.

UPDATE:

By now, it's unnecessary to mention a propaganda media that supports and encourages attacks on free speech (the irony of this breathtaking) by labeling as "false" facts/information that subsequently turn out to be true. As an example, consider the  "false" story of Biden and Burisma which is now turning out to be true. The propaganda media worked overtime to suppress it—except to say it was not true. 

Here's one of many summaries of the propaganda medias attempt to "poo-poo" the Biden Burisma scandal.

Worst Places

In what can only be characterized as unintentional comedy, the trained hamsters at one broadcast member of the propaganda media, CNBC, have rated the "10 worst states to live and work in." Please note that CNBC is a business channel, meaning it shouldn't be as unhinged as its "socially conscious" cousins MSNBC and NBC. Unfortunately, it's apparently a family thing.

You'd think that the "worst" list might include states with very high personal and business taxes, like say NJ or CA, leading to significantly higher cost of living. Nope. You'd certainly guess that the worst list would include states with high crime stats or homelessness problems, like, say, IL or NY. Not a chance. Okay, okay, then maybe you'd consider states that are experiencing out-migration with hundreds of thousands of residents fleeing for a better life elsewhere, like say, NY, NJ, CA, CT, IL. Again, no. 

The states that made the "worst" list have low taxes on both individuals and businesses, have relatively low crime stats, and have significant in-migration. Despite meeting those criteria, all 10 of the "worst" states are ... you guessed it ... red.

About 500,000 people moved to TX in 2021 and 2022. Of that group, 200,000 were college educated. Obviously, they're all idiots because CNBC ranks TX as #1 worst state with an F grade. The in-bound folks must be under this misimpression that "F" means 'Fantastic.'

Then there's #10, my home state of FL, Garnering a D grade from CNBC, FL also has low taxes on both individuals and businesses, relatively low crime stats, a great economy, and significant in-migration, not to mention a very friendly climate during winter months. Oddly, despite it's D grade, FL is the fastest growing state with a population that increased by about 400,000 people between 2021 and 2022. Those inbound fools must think that D means 'desirable.' Oh well.

Outlets like CNBC beclown themselves when they publish rankings like these. And then they wonder why so many people pay absolutely no attention to what they say or write.

No Surprise, Again

In conservative circles, there's an on-going meme that the Biden administration is actually the third Obama term. It's hard to really know if that's true, becuause the anonymous group of puppetmasters who control the decision making for our increasingly cognitively-disabled president are never identified publicly. It is true that there are a fair number of Obama administration re-treads who are in senior positions within the administration, and I suspect they have long memories.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the administration takes a cool position when it comes to Israel (think: Obama) and an even cooler (some might say, hostile) position when it comes to Israel's Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, who Democrats have labeled as "hard right" since he made Barack Obama seem small on a visit to the US in 2015.

Never daunted, however, many Democrats (along with many left-leaning Israelis) haven't let up, suggesting that Netayahu's recent attempt to tamper with the Israeli Supreme Court is a "threat to democracy," ironic given the Dems' own ongoing attempts to tamper with SCOTUS. In fact, the far left progressive fringe has gone so far as to label Israel as a "racist" state.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment:

Last week the White House issued a statement urging Israel “to protect and respect the right of peaceful assembly” for judicial-reform protesters—as if Israel has done something else. New York Rep. Jerry Nadler calls Israel’s reform proposals “anti-democratic” and a threat to judicial independence. That he and other Democrats support packing the U.S. Supreme Court, and putting it under Congress’s thumb on recusal rules, never seems to prompt any cognitive dissonance. They treat Israel as an incipient authoritarian state.

As I have noted on numerous occasions, the Democrats are masters of psychological projection, blaming others for things (in this case, court tampering) that they themselves either are doing or want to accomplish. Some Democrats are also prone to accuse everyone but themselves of racist motives:

On Saturday Seattle Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chairman of the Progressive Caucus, told the Netroots Nation activist conference, “I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state.” This false claim was a staple of Soviet propaganda, recognizable by its moral inversion. Israel is the least racist state in the Middle East and a stark contrast to the Palestinian Authority.

To their credit, about 40 Democrats in Congress rightfully scurried to condemn Jaypal's preposterous comment, but others were cool to any condemnation. Again, no surprise.

Cocainegate—The Conclusion

Security checks at every point of entry. CCTV cameras by the hundreds focused on virtually every hallway, entry point, and many conference rooms, a record on every person who enters and exits. An armed, well trained, professional security force that is chartered with keeping the building safe and secure. 

No, I'm not talking about the prison that housed Jeffrey Epstein when he (ahem!) committed "suicide." I am talking about the White House—one of the most secure buildings in the world. 

Yesterday, the Secret service announced that their investigation of Cocainegate has been concluded and (shocker of shockers, not!) they were unable to determine who brought a baggie of cocaine into the building. After all, there were "no finger prints" (one wag suggested that the person of interest must be an double amputee, thereby narrowing the potential suspects), no DNA (hmmm ... aliens?), and just too many visitors to investigate ... sooo ... case closed.

I suppose you just have to laugh at the chutzpa of the current regime. They've learned that blatant, in-your-face lying works, and they're going with it. They have no worry about a coverup investigation because the propaganda media protect them. They have little, if any regard for the truth, because, well, in their fantasy world, Biden (D) is the greatest president ever and a little thing like coverup is ... um ... justified?

Steven Kruiser comments:

We’re supposed to believe that some rando waltzed into THE WHITE HOUSE with a Ziploc full of Peruvian Prime, dumped it there in case the staff wanted a bump, then left completely undetected? I repeat, this happened at THE WHITE HOUSE. For anyone new here, it’s one of the more secure and surveilled residences in the world.

It also happens to be a house where the residents have a son who has been known to hit the nose candy a time or two. This is the most boring connect-the-dots ever. There are only two dots.

This story is totally believable if we want to think that the United States Secret Service is utterly incompetent. They didn’t say that’s what they want us to think, but it’s definitely on the table. Then again, maybe the Secret Service was feeling left out and wanted to get in on the “protecting the Bidens” action that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been doing so well. That would explain the convenient lack of curiosity on this issue.

Hey, Jeffrey Epstein offed himself just as his guards slept, the surveillance cameras magically turned off, suicide protocols were cancelled ... etc., etc. We have to believe that because the government tells us so. In fact, they wrote a report that "proves" it. They'll repurpose that same report for Cocainegate. At least in the latter case, no one was murdered. [BTW, where is the list of Epstein's prominent (mostly Democrat clients) and where are the videos of those clients when they innocently visited Orgy Island? Oh well, never mind.]

So we all move on, inured to the lies that have now become a normal part of the deep state's effort to convince us that Biden is beyond reproach ... or criticism ... or the law?

After all, when prominent Dems tweet stuff like this:

Damn, what a guy! Seven time zones!!! And not a hint of jet lag. That Joe Biden has it together, and as a consequence, there's no need to muddy his sterling reputation or his touted clarity of thinking with a tawdry tale of cocaine.

Wow. Just wow.

The New COVID-19

The majority of citizens get their science and political news (the two topics used to be entirely distinct, but now, unfortunately, they cannot be separated) from headlines. Most people do not have the background to grind through scientific papers, they do not have the inclination to examine models or statistics to determine their import or veracity, and they do not have the mindset to think critically. Instead they gobble up a biased and inaccurate media narrative that is designed to misinform, frighten, and mislead—all in a successful effort to allow authoritarian leaders to pass regulations and laws that increase their political power and do NOTHING to make the public safer or more secure. 

More important than any of this, it appears that the public does not have a long memory. People want to trust "leaders" and government agencies who have been proven to lie to them. They want to forget the damage that authoritarian policies have done to their livelihoods, their community, their health, and their children.

As the debacle that was Covid fear mongering, bad policy and societal damage fades, a new debacle is gaining momentum. The propaganda media has decided that weather is the harbinger of Armageddon and has pushed the climate change narrative that an "historically hot summer" is the fashionable 'we're all gonna die' scare of mid-2023. In essense:

Climate change has become the new COVID-19

with all of the bad decisions, authoritarian dictates, and fear mongering that are implied by that statement. Far too many of us want to believe, and a reconstituted Team Apocalypse uses that simple fact to manipulate us with a Tsunami of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that convinces the public to agree to insane policies (e.g., here) without asking questions. After all, who wants to be a "denier?" Who wants to be labeled a "conspiracy theorist?" Who wants to be shadow banned or censored or criticized by the elites who never, ever have to live within the policies that are forced on the rest of us.

So we have demagogues like Bernie Sanders writing:

The last eight years have been the eight hottest on record. This year is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, and this Fourth of July might have been the hottest day in the past 125,000 years.

Climate change is ravaging the planet. We are now seeing floods, droughts, extreme weather disturbances and wild fires causing unprecedented damage. If there is not bold, immediate and united action by governments throughout the world, the quality of life that we are leaving our kids and future generations is very much in question.

In the short term, we will be looking at more melting of the Arctic ice caps, rising sea levels and increased flooding. We will experience more drought and a decrease in food production. We will see major damage caused by intense storms, tornadoes and other extreme weather disturbances. We will see a decline in economic activity and the migration of millions of people as a result of water shortages. We will see a major disruption in all forms of marine life as a result of warming sea water and the acidification of the oceans.

Like far too many leftists, Bernie lives in a fantasy world in which accurate "average world-wide temps" can be easily assessed over a 125,000 year period. That, of course, is nonsense. In the real world, the 125,000-year claim has been thoroughly debunked to the extent that even NOAA (a Biden administration agency) will not support it.

But forgetting the real world for a moment and entering catastrophist-world, you'd think we're all gonna die unless we adopt Bernie's hard left and authoritarian dictates going forward. Bernie's warning would be scary if it wasn't for the irrefutable fact that similar warnings were made in 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, all with due dates predicting catastrophic outcomes that typically were to occur 10 years after the warning. None of those predictions came to pass.

Sure, it's hot. It's summer in the northern hemisphere. Sure, there are periods where we have hot weather, drought, forest fires, heavy rainfall, tornadoes, hurricanes, and the like. But those periods of extreme weather (not climate—weather!) are followed by other periods where the weather moderates.

But the fact-free obsession with climate change continues. In a typically overwrought article in the progressive The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino writes:

It may be impossible to seriously consider the reality of climate change for longer than ninety seconds without feeling depressed, angry, guilty, grief-stricken, or simply insane.

Maybe it's because they're "depressed, angry, guilty, grief-stricken, or simply insane" that climate activists like Bernie, Al Gore, Greta, and John Kerry cannot tell us the quantitative contribution of CO2 or human endeavor have on either weather or climate. But they tell do us 'we're all gonna die' unless we act now! 

But the real question is why the coordinated effort among virtually all of the propaganda media to frighten people. Why the "1000 year records" nonsense? Why the ubiquitous temperature maps in blood red? [recall the ubiquitous Covid death scoreboards of a few years past] Why the breathless warnings by the usual suspects? It's as if this is battlefield prep (a.k.a. PSYOPS), but for what forthcoming battle? Jordan Peterson encapsulates the hysteria well when he writes:

Then
at night
the climate monsters come
and devour
all the children

The same climate activists who see "monsters" in every dark corner, are blind to the reality that both weather and climate are multiparametic, i.e., they are affected by many parameters, and most of those parameters have significantly more impact on climate than CO2. They never seem to discuss the fact that any changes that are occurring in climate are slow moving, that humans adapt well, and that energy and mediation technologies are not static, but ever-changing. They never seem to talk about the reality that emerging nations need energy to grow and prosper and that their dictates would hurt those nations in ways that may be irreparable. They never consider the economic impact of draconian climate policy on the middle class and the poor or on the mental health of children (and some adults) who are continually propagandized with catastrophist claims. Nah, they simply want control, and the power that control imparts.

If any of this sounds familiar, think back only three years. Team Apocalypse (note the date on this link) used the same strategy to invoke policies that have now been proven to be ineffective and worse, severely damaging. We should have learned that before we enact draconian measures, we first determine the harm they might cause. We didn't do that for Covid and apparently, Bernie, Al Gore, Greta, John Kerry and their supporters in the propaganda media want to do it all over again to "save the planet!!". 

They're not only wrong ... they're dangerous.

UPDATE:

Alex Berenson was one of the only journalists who recognized and reported the dishonesty, blatant misrepresentations, and dangers associated with blue state and federal government COVID policies — from the very beginning. For going against the prevailing catastrophist narrative, he was censored, vilified by the propaganda media, and otherwise shunned by all the best people. There was only one problem—he was right about everything — from the damage lockdowns and school closures did to the unnecessary risks associated with largely untested vaccines and mandates for age cohorts that were in no statistical danger from Covid in the first place.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Berenson sees the suspicious trending that is discussed in the body of this post. He writes:

Climate reporting in the elite media has become a series of endless, breathlessly reported firsts and 1-in-1,000 year events. The hottest June ever in Houston. The driest August in Tokyo. The wettest April in London. The biggest wildfire in Quebec.

Berenson goes on the explain why this type of narrative driven 'reporting' is nonsensical (read the whole thing). Here's an example:

Last night, a big thunderstorm hit New York’s Hudson Valley, where I live. (I wasn’t home ...

Yes, a thunderstorm in July in the Northeast. Shocker, I know.

This one was particularly slow-moving, though, and it dumped a lot of rain. Or, as the Daily News reported, “Storm in New York’s Hudson Valley kills one, brings 9 inches of rain: ‘1,000 year event.’

1000-year-event? Dear Lord Above, what have we done?

Okay, let’s look at the map.

That purple area is a huge rain dump.

But that’s not a map of the United States, or even New York, or even southern New York, or even the Hudson Valley.

That rain dump covered, wait for it, a handful of towns. For some reason a storm cell got hung up just over the Hudson River - maybe there’s a good meteorological explanation for why, maybe not. It drenched the area to the west and slightly to the east of the river with two months of rain in a few hours.

Whole lotta rain, for sure. Our house is in that blotch somewhere. I felt bad not to be home, until I got the update from my older daughter this morning: it rained, we lost power, the generator came on, the power came back on. Two of the three kids slept through it all. The end.

A 1-IN-1000 YEAR EVENT, I TELL YA!

Now for a little context to balance the steady diet of shrill climate hysteria that has been the mainstay of the NYT, WaPo, LAT, the alphabet networks and the rest of the propaganda media. Berenson provides the context that the propagandists refuse to address:

Weather-related deaths rose slightly from the 1970s through the 1980s. They have plunged 75 percent since, even though the [world] population has nearly doubled. Over the last decade, fewer than 50 people a day died from extreme weather - on a planet that now has 8,000,000,000 people [making your chances of dying about 0.0000000125% on any given day] ....

So the question is not if climate change is real. It is if climate change hysteria, driven largely by people so wealthy that they will continue to live exactly as they do now whatever happens to the global economy, threatens to undo the economic growth that has been the most important factor reducing deaths from extreme weather.

Or we could just keep looking for 1000-year-floods to scream over.

There's a reason for the screaming and it has NOTHING to do with "saving the planet."

 

Tim Scott

During Barack Obama's eight years as president, I suggested that he exhibited all of the signs of a narcissist and at times, a few of the indicia of a sociopath. In an odd way, Obama was a more glib and polished version of Donald Trump. He said and did many dumb things, but unlike Trump, he was always polished about it, making him the darling of progressives who embraced him as the first African American president — a man who could do no wrong.

In a recent commentary, the editors of the Wall Street Journal write:

As America’s first black President, Barack Obama entered office with a promise of improving race relations and reducing political discord. Eight years later, rancor was worse as Mr. Obama’s Administration exploited race as a political weapon on voting rules, criminal justice, and preferences for jobs and much more. [The Democrats have followed Obama's strategy ever since.] This explains why the former President is now attacking South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott.

Last week [late June] Mr. Obama, who doesn’t riff by accident, went after Mr. Scott and Nikki Haley, two of the GOP’s minority candidates for President. “I think there’s a long history of African-American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, ‘Everything’s great, and we can all make it.’ I mean, Nikki Haley, I think, has a similar approach,” Obama said on David Axelrod’s podcast ...

Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott both rebutted the former President’s patronizing comments. “There’s no higher compliment than to be attacked by President Obama,” Mr. Scott said. 

That Democrats sometimes appear to be obsessed with race comes as no surprise to anyone who follows politics. More than a few members of the party regularly label our country as "systemically racist" or "white supremacist." That would be the same country that elected Barack Obama president -- twice. The same country that in 1965 instituted the 'Great Society' in an attempt to right many racial wrongs of the past, spending billions on a variety of education, social, job-training, and other programs. The same country in which people of color have been given preferences in government contracts and college admissions for over 50 years. The same country that has seen an African American middle class rise to positions of authority in both the public and private sector.

Even worse, many Democrats cannot abide African Americans in prominent positions who do not adopt their narrative. So they viciously attack people like Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell and regularly dismiss or demonize GOP politicians such as Tim Scott. Again, the editors of the WSJ:

... Democrats can’t abide that or it might upset their advantage among minority voters. If Republicans ever broke through to win 20% of the black vote, for example, Republicans would become the majority party. Democrats want to keep racial tensions boiling with accusations about “Jim Crow 2.0” and “systemic racism” lest more minority voters give GOP candidates a hearing.

Mr. Scott in particular is a threat because, as he often notes, his life story symbolizes the country’s racial evolution. He has never sugar-coated America’s racist history, noting how he has experienced it in his own life. But he doesn’t use that as an excuse to deny progress.

His ideas to reduce poverty are also far better than Mr. Obama’s default to government dependency and failing public schools. Mr. Scott wants to free minorities from union schools and escape poverty by giving them more economic opportunity. Those ideas are a dagger pointed at the heart of the progressive project that sustains a permanent underclass dependent on Democratic welfare programs. That is the real reason Mr. Obama is attacking Mr. Scott and Ms. Haley. 

Indeed, it is. Scott and his message are a real threat to the Democrats' continuing attempt to divide the country on racial issues. It is truly ironic and sad that the first African American to be elected POTUS left only one enduring strategy for his political party—a strategy that encouraged racial divisiveness. It's even sadder that he attempted to reinforce that message almost eight years after he left office.

UPDATE (07-12-2023):

Although I do think the scenario described is a long shot, here's an interesting take on Tim Scott's chances in early GOP primaries.

Cocainegate

On the surface, the news that the U.S. Secret Service found cocaine in the White House is actually comical. Despite the faux outrage of the Biden Administration's opponents, it's really no big thing. But the evolving attempt to stonewall the story and refuse to identify the culprit quickly and honestly (a "law enforcement source" has told the trained hamsters in the propaganda media that it will be 'very' difficult to find the culprit) is representative of an evolving trend coming out of the administration and deep state agencies who are sympathetic to Biden (meaning virtually all deep state agencies).

Let's digress. Recall how the deep state (FBI, DoJ, Intel agencies) and Democratic elites pushed the Russian hoax, refusing to acknowledge that the whole accusation was manufactured by the Clinton campaign when they knew it was. Recall how the CDC and the NIH lied blatantly and repeated about the source of COVID-19, the efficacy of vaccines and masks, the effectiveness of lockdowns, the damage caused to children by school closures. Recall how the DHS lied about the border, claiming that it was "closed" and that they were doing everything possible to stop the flow of illegal immigrants. Recall how 51 past Intel agency big wigs signed a letter claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop was likely Russian disinformation when we now know that they knew it was nothing of the sort. And recall how the propaganda media pushed each of these stories, lying to support these mendacious claims. All of that is an example of the new in-your-face exertion of raw power—"You know we're lying, we know you know we're lying, you know we know you know we're lying ... and we don't care, we lie anyway. And ... there's nothing you can do about it."

But back to Cocainegate. It's just another small, near-comical example of the raw exertion of power by the ruling elites. Conservative firebrand Kurt Schlichter writes:

... our garbage ruling class is not composed of impressive people. They didn’t build the institutions they are destroying. They inherited them via their Ivy League credentials – often as legacies, which the left will cry about but not actually change because that is how the ruling class perpetuates itself. These are not accomplished people. These are not smart people. These are not brave people, and these are not tough people. They are cruel and ruthless people, willing to use the existing systems of power to defend their societal sinecure, but their problem and their weaknesses that they rely on the proles to do their dirty work.

These "cruel and ruthless" people think nothing of destroying the reputations and lives of whistleblowers* or nominees to the Supreme Court (think: Bret Kavanaugh). They think nothing of censoring the opinions of eminent scientists who disagree with their preferred narrative (think: Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya). They think nothing of ruining the reputation of the nation's law enforcement and Intel agencies (think: the FBI and CIA), it's medical institutions (think: the CDC and NIH), it's DHS.

But back yet again to Cocaingate. The White House is one of the most secure buildings in the world. There are CCTV cameras in every hallway, in many work spaces—everywhere! And yet, we're told that "finding the suspect" will be close to impossible.  I guess this approach has worked so well in the past it's now the go-to strategy going forward. Schlichter continues:

How is this trend going to turn out? It’s too early to say. But it very likely will get much, much worse. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Republicans are going to nominate a man for president who the Democrats will throw in jail on trumped up charges – figuratively and literally – before the 2024 election. And then it’s going to occur to even the most unbased people that the rules don’t necessarily apply anymore. Oh, we’re not going to break into some sort of civil war because Trump gets hauled off to Leavenworth. That’s not likely for a number of reasons. But it is going to destroy the illusions of norms for the normals, and the illusion of norms matters. Norms are, in fact, the only real protection those currently engaged in eliminating the norms have.

It hard to know what will happen when the vast population of normals finally comes to recognize that norms and equal justice, truth and transparency, and at least a semblance of honesty from our so-called leaders is nothing but an illusion. But one thing is certain, even if the cruel and ruthless people who currently lead are too ignorant of history to recognize it—this path is unsustainable. What cannot continue indefinitely will not continue indefinitely. Pushback is coming.

FOOTNOTE (added 07-07-2023):

*  As if to prove my point, Hunter Biden's lawyers have initiated a smear campaign against the IRS whistleblowers who threaten not only Hunter, but far more important, the current president. Kim Strassel reports:

Hunter Biden has adopted a legal strategy of threats and character assassination. It was on display in his legal team’s recent letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith. The 10-page screed was a broad condemnation of the committee’s decision to release the interviews of two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who worked the Hunter investigation and claim irregularities in the process that produced Hunter’s recent plea deal. Hunter lawyer Abbe Lowell complained the release violated the “spirit” of “tax laws” that protect “private” taxpayer information ... 

The press cheered the smear, with Axios gloating: “Hunter Biden’s lawyer roasts IRS whistleblowers.” The New York Times, days earlier, buried its confirmation of one of Mr. Shapley’s key claims: that a Joe Biden-appointed California prosecutor had refused to bring charges against Hunter.

Then there’s the Washington Post, which in its own story on the Lowell letter quoted a line claiming Mr. Shapley engaged in “leaks.” It somehow failed to tell its readers that the one concrete leak Mr. Lowell cites appeared in its own newspaper—which means the Post knows the actual source, and therefore presumably knows that it isn’t Mr. Shapley and that the letter’s accusations are untrue. Especially as the same reporter worked on both stories. Instead, the paper aids the Hunter narrative. As someone once said, democracy dies in darkness.

To repeat, these "cruel and ruthless" people think nothing of destroying the reputations and lives of whistleblowers. 

The big question is -- will there be any punishment for a president who appears to have significantly enriched himself by indirectly selling access to his office and his influence? The answer—not if the deep state elites and their propaganda media hamsters have anything to say about it.

UPDATE (07-08-2023):

Drip, drip drip. The lies, stonewalling and the stench of corruption coming out of the Biden administration have been too much for those of us who have noted their bad decisions and incompetence for some time, but it seems that relatively minor scandals, like Cocainegate, are having a cumulative effect, even for some of Biden's past supporters on the Left. 

In the left-leaning Atlantic, we have progressive writer, Eliot Cohen, telling Joe Biden to "step aside." Sure, Cohen uses "age" as an excuse and never mentions the many scandals that are brewing within the administration. But the mere fact that writers like Cohen are suggesting that Biden step aside is an indication that they're worried about the corruption that they know is there, but refuse to acknowledge.

We also see White House reporters (a.k.a. trained hamsters) from the alphabet networks, past pillars of the propaganda media, beginning to ask press spokesperson, KJP, harder questions. KJP's attempts at obfuscation would be comic if they weren't so infuriating. 

It's looking increasingly likely that the Democrats will move to 'convince' Biden to step aside, but first they have to solve the Kamala problem.