Monday, December 16, 2019

Mike Ramirez and Argus Hamilton on the impeachment project for Maxine Waters

Mike Ramirez  "Ramirez, who studied premed at the University of California, Irvine, originally considered journalism a hobby. But he was hooked when his first cartoon for the college newspaper, lampooning candidates for student office, had the student assembly demanding an apology.
" 'Editorial cartoons should be smart and substantive, provocative and informative. They should stir passions and deep emotions. Editorial cartoons should be the catalyst for thought, and frankly speaking, if you can make politicians think, that is an accomplishment in itself. If I don't get at least one death threat every few months, then I'm not doing my job," Ramirez says of his penchant for sparking controversy.
"In addition to the 1994 and 2008 Pulitzer Prizes, Ramirez was the 2008 winner of the prestigious Fischetti Award. He is a three-time Sigma Delta Chi, Society of Professional Journalism Award winner, a Lincoln Fellow and a recipient of the UCI Medal.
"He is a senior editor and the editorial cartoonist for Investor's Business Daily. He is formerly the editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times, The Memphis Commercial Appeal and a contributing cartoonist for USA Today. His work is syndicated by Creators Syndicate.
"Don't leave without checking out his editorial cartoons and Ramirez Caricatures."

"Comedy Store reran the impeachment hearings on a back-bar TV before comics who know the facts of the case better than House Members from our own experience. You play the cover charge, we tell the jokes, and that’s the quid pro quo. How hard or how little you laugh is the trial that follows.

"The White House Counsel wrote House Democrats Tuesday saying an impeachment inquiry without a House vote to impeach is invalid. The comedy continues. Joe Biden demanded that Trump be impeached for questioning the honesty of the Eastern European billionaire Hunter Biden."
"Chairman Adam Schiff's impeachment inquiry yielded no eyewitnesses to Trump wrongdoing and ended in Schiff having to deny multiple times he met with the whistleblower. I have just one question for Adam Schiff. How much is Donald Trump paying you to stage this inquiry?"


Judge Blocks Los Angeles Law Forcing Contractors to Disclose Ties to NRA

Legal Insurrection  "The National Rifle Association (NRA) received some good news in its legal challenge to a Los Angeles ordinance requiring businesses to disclose any links with the advocacy group: a federal judge temporarily blocked the rule.
The Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance this past February requiring companies that do business with the city to disclose any financial connections to the gun-rights advocacy organization.
The Fairfax, Virginia-based organization responded with a federal lawsuit against the city, arguing the policy silences NRA members and supporters in the city by forcing them to disclose their ties with the organization.
"U.S. District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson found that the Los Angeles City Council enacted the rule to suppress the speech of the NRA and its sponsors or business affiliations." . . .

Greta: Put climate change deniers "against the wall"?


Kurt Schlicter  "Clearly Greta Thunberg is being exploited by her cynical puppetmasters, but equally clearly she’s a tiresome, bizarre Marxist scold whose exploitation of the hapless dummies who buy into the climate change hoax is part of what is an increasingly violent plot to undermine capitalism and freedom. Recently, the cretins at TIME, which shockingly still exists in 2019, named her “Person of the Year.” That’s appropriate, since 2019 has been a very annoying year." . . .
. . . "The kid is a fanatic, and though that’s no fault of her own – she’s a victim of her pinko exploiters – she is still spewing bloodstained poison. 
"Bloodstained poison, really? Isn’t she just a nice Eastern Norwegian who wants a better world with love and hugging? Or is she yet another aspiring fanatic ready to kill for the kreepy kommie climate kult?" . . .

Adam Schiff: the Greta Thunberg of Congress

Schiff town hall meeting in his district erupts in catcalls and chaos  "Adam Schiff walked into a buzz saw at a town hall meeting back in his district in Glendale, California, as blowback erupted for his lies and grandstanding advancing impeachment.
" 'While as a general rule, I deplore the loss of civility as the country polarizes, we have long passed the point where simply behaving ourselves and calling out the other side for its sins has any positive effect.  #Resistance goes both ways beyond a certain point, and that point is now in the rearview mirror.
" 'I think this is the future for Schiff and his co-conspirators:" . . .
WATCH: Chaos Erupts When Constituents Confront Schiff Over Impeachment During a Town Hall  . . . Multiple people sat in the front of the audience with signs that read "Don't Impeach." 
"In a video, audience members in the back of the crowd yelled "liar!" One man said Schiff would be known for "committing treason," a clear reference to Schiff spearheading the impeachment of the president. 
"Those who were Schiff supporters quickly surrounded those who backed President Trump and chanted "Adam! Adam! Adam!"
"As Trump supporters tried exiting the venue, they were pushed and shoved and told to "leave" or "get out." One of the men held up a "re-elect Trump" flag, at which point Schiff supporters attempted to rip the flag out of his hands." . . .
Shameless Schiff goes Sgt. Schultz   . . . "Appearing on the Sunday morning talk shows, he fell back on the Sgt Schultz defense – that he just didn’t know the facts, but with no apology for acting on false information.  That is total BS, as Steve Scalise pointed out on Twitter:" 
Steve Scalise tweeted:
. was right from the start: bad actors at the FBI abused FISA to spy on 's campaign.Schiff had the SAME info as Nunes, yet wrote a false report he still won't fully admit was a fraud.And he's the guy Dems trust to run impeachment? Give me a break.
 Comey and Schiff: Tweedle-dee-Dum and Tweedle-dee-Dee  . . . "The most damning omission from Wallace's interview was not pressing Schiff hard enough about the Nunes Memo of February 2018  in which Nunes laid out everything he had learned to date about the FBI's gross abuse of the FISA courts.  Schiff promptly released his own memo disavowing the facts in the Nunes memo.  Now we know that everything Nunes wrote was true and that Schiff's memo was, as Mollie Hemingway wrote, riddled with lies." . . .
Nunes tells Schiff he needs 'rehabilitation' after IG report: 'Admit you have a problem'


Adam Schiff is Shameless   . . . "Schiff is such a stone-cold partisan that he can’t even put aside his quest for power to care about protecting his grandchildren from anti-Semitism. That is shameful and I’d love to see him try and explain it to his grandkids.
"Schiff, Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrats leading this grossly partisan and undemocratic process are hypocritical jerks who prove day after day that all they care about is partisanship and power. The Constitution? Nah. Democracy? Nope. Patriotism? What’s that? The American people? Seriously…?
. . . "But the “Late Show” where Schiff was afforded a platform to call Republicans shameful? That’s a priority during this very serious time in our country’s history? You betcha. And who cares if it costs taxpayer money to transport him here, surround him with security in the form of Secret Service and local police forces.  Certainly not Adam Schiff.  When Schiff looks in the mirror, he sees “shameful” staring back at him. He’s just too stupid and shameless to know it."
Adam Schiff to Colbert: How Will ‘Shameful’ Republicans Explain Defending Trump to Their Grandchildren
 (Colbert also seems to have an obsession over the penises of world leaders.)   . . . “'For some of our members, who are defending the Constitution, it is their finest hour,” Adam Schiff told Colbert. “But for others, who are willfully blinding themselves to this president’s misconduct, it is the most shameful hour.' ” . . .

Liberals accuse Army, Navy cadets of flashing ‘racist’ hand signs

Trevor Thomas  "Of all the ridiculous, baseless charges of racism taken seriously by people who ought to know better, the claim that cadets used a racist hand gesture at the Army-Navy Game last weekend is among the worst, because it slimes the best among us, who are part of the least racist institution in the United States (and the world)." . . .
. . . "If you need proof that modern liberalism corrupts virtually everything it touches, consider the silly game described above and the Army-Navy football game played over this past weekend. As reported by even USA Today, cadets who were merely playing this silly game are being accused of making the “White Power hand symbol during a pregame broadcast of the Army-Navy game.' ”
. . . 
"The gesture, though, is also used in the so-called Circle Game. In it, a person holds an upside-down OK sign below his or her waist. If someone notices, the person making the symbol is able to punch the person who notices it in the shoulder.
"The Anti-Defamation League in September added the OK symbol as a gesture of hate.
"In October, Universal Studios Resort fired an actor dressed as a "Despicable Me" character after the person was accused of using the symbol."

Army-Navy game: Academies looking into students' hand symbols during pregame broadcast


The climate change debate: liberalism's effect on informed discourse.

The "press" does to climate change skeptics what they continue do to President Trump  All the so-called climate fears have been promulgated by those same people. If we become convinced as to the declared cause of climate change, the immense cost will have to be taught by those more trusted than those we see attempting it daily. TD



The debate: my presentation by Judith Curry



. . . "Here's the spat update from the German train company, which got mad at its portrayal as a moving hellhole:
"A German railway company has taken back an apology they made to Greta Thunberg after they realized the climate activist wasn’t schlepping it on the train’s floor but instead was treated “friendly” in first class.
"The rail company was responding to an image Thunberg tweeted of herself sitting amid bags and suitcases on the floor of what she called “overcrowded trains through Germany' ” . . .
The debate: my presentation, by Judith Curry





Elizabeth Warren Releases Plan For LGBTQ Rights And Equality


Yahoo News  "Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren released a wide-ranging LGBTQ policy plan on Thursday morning, vowing to enact measures and funnel resources toward fighting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender expression.

"In a 12-page memo, the Massachusetts senator outlined dozens of ways a Warren administration would “fight for LGBTQ+ equality in solidarity with the leaders and organizers who have been at the helm from the very beginning.”
"The measures include things like working to pass the Equality Act, which would extend civil rights protections to LGBTQ people, and amending the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to ensure it can’t be used to discriminate against LGBTQ people. "
"Thursday’s plan comes on the heels of a sweeping climate justice proposal Warren released on Wednesday and which reads as an ambitious blueprint of how to implement a Green New Deal." . . .