American Silliness: 2/9/2019

Weasel Zippers is a constant source of this sort of thing.

Mandatory Train Travel And Regulated COW FARTS: The 'Green New Deal' Is Even Crazier Than You Thought  "The full elimination of all fossil fuel consumption, including natural gas, within the next ten years. This includes the full elimination of motor vehicles that operate on fossil fuels, including any vehicle with a combustion engine, be that vehicle a car, truck, boat, or plane. It's not super clear whether Ocasio-Cortez and her cohorts realize that electric cars also run on fossil fuels (the Green New Deal requires all parking lots to have electric vehicle charging stations, regardless).". . . 

Major League Baseball deems ‘disabled list’ too offensive  "Say goodbye to Major League Baseball’s disabled list.  "The league will rename the disabled list the “injured list,” according to an ESPN report, for fear the term “disabled” could offend." . . .

NBC Meteorologist: Earth Would ‘Just Be Fine’ if Humans ‘All Disappeared’ 
Except for me, of course.  Language advisory, regrettably, in this video.

Dem Rep. Ilhan Omar Demands USA Powerlifting Be Investigated For Barring Men From Competing Against Women . . . "Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar recommended Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison investigate USA Powerlifting for barring biological males from women’s events, according to a Jan. 31 letter she sent USA Powerlifting.
"Omar called it a “myth” that men who identify as transgender women have a “direct competitive advantage” and copied Ellison on the letter, “with a recommendation that he investigate this discriminatory behavior.' ”   How unIslamic.

Dem. Rep. Green: VA Blackface Controversy Shows Why Trump Should Be Impeached

College photoshops billboard to make students look more diverse  "This illustrates the importance of diversity to higher ed. It’s like an undeclared religion in academia."

Watch: Cory Booker Goes All In For Ocasio Cortez’s Green New Deal: Like Fighting Nazis

Weasel Zippers  "In-kind contribution to the Trump 2020 campaign."

Twitter Turns on Ocasio-Cortez After SOTU Behavior

Kira Davis calls AOC "America's child".  Kids will be kids.

Western Journal  "Twitter Turns on Ocasio-Cortez After SOTU Behavior Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is known for having a popular presence on Twitter among her nearly 3 million followers, But the freshman congresswoman is taking some heat for her behavior at Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Ocasio-Cortez, like many of her female colleagues, wore all white to the yearly address, in solidarity with her fellow feminists. However, it was her refusal to show appreciation for some of the more basic human interest issues addressed by President Donald Trump that caught the attention of many people on Twitter. Fox National security strategist and radio host Sebastian Gorka noted Ocasio-Cortez’s refusal to applaud even for the most humanitarian of issues. Political commentator Ryan Fournier tweeted While Trump’s address might not have been appreciated by the youngest congresswoman in history, it was well received by the American people. A CBS poll showed that 76 percent of those who listened to the address approved of the president’s speech, only 43 percent of which were Republicans."

Rick Moran: The wild and wacky mind of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  . . . "It is telling that she hasn't a clue what she herself believes.  In order to have a personal philosophy — conservative, liberal, socialist — you must have the knack for introspection, the ability to step outside yourself and examine what you really believe.

"But introspection is an intellectual exercise, and, lacking evidence to the contrary, Ocasio-Cortez has no intellect to exercise.

"She doesn't know what she believes.  Does she even know who she is?

. . . 

OCASIO-CORTEZ: "Because we are standing on native land. And Latino people are descendants of native people, and we cannot be told and criminalized simply for our identity or our status."

"Standing on native land"?  Well, at least she's not advocating a return of California to Mexico. "   . . .

Wait! Not so fast there! AOC gets here ideas from many who advocate exactly that. Voters have put into power a woman who does not like her own country as founded and learns at the feet of many others of the same mind. TD

Matthew Whitaker’s ‘Not Acceptable’ Judiciary Hearing Responses Set Off Sheila Jackson Lee

Daily Caller

“ 'The rules are that you are here, so I need to ask the question and I need to have my time restored so that you can behave appropriately,” Jackson Lee continued. “I will behave appropriately as a member of the judiciary committee.”

Jackson Lee’s response was triggered after she asked the House Judiciary Committee if her time to question the witness was restored and Whitaker replied that he was not sure." 

Then Mr. Whitaker got into this with House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler . . . 
"President Donald Trump appointed Whitaker to serve as the acting attorney general after former attorney general Jeff Sessions was forced to resign. With the elevation, Whitaker assumed control of oversight of the Mueller’s probe." . . .

Trevor Loudon’s 2019 list of socialists and communists in Congress

Noisy Room

"I’ve been asked to compile a list of socialists and communists in Congress. A friend of mine was challenged to name “even two socialists in Congress.” Altogether, if you add in Islamist connections I think about 100 members of the House of Representatives would struggle to pass a low-level background security check..but guess what? There are no security checks in Congress. 
"Here’s my list of 50 of the most obvious socialists in the House, with links to my website Keywiki for the backup evidence. Apologies to the many I’ve omitted. Please email me at trevor.newzeal @gmail.com if you’d like to be included in future lists."  . . .

Loudon's list here.

"Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker and public speaker from Christchurch, New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics."

Donald Trump’s Annihilation of the Democrat** Party

Conrad Black

"The nadir of the amoral egotism of what might broadly be called “Me-ism” has been reached by the avant garde of the Democratic Party in their race to the bottom of the electoral depths. The renunciation of any notions of sacrifice, patriotic pride, the spirituality of life, or the recognition of anything except the smash-and-grab politics of endless atomized grievances and instant gratification of convenience, has reached what must, in its way, be the end of history.

"The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist, led the way downwards with an unctuous statement on the virtues of delivering children, assuring their survival as live babies, and then determining in discussion with the mother (of course) whether they deserved to be allowed to survive.
. . . 
"Now Trump has banished the worst of the NeverTrumpers from the congressional Republican delegation, and won the rest over by friendly persuasion—except for Mitt Romney, who virtually terminated his useful career as a senator two days before he was

sworn in with an article on the president’s character. The piece confirmed about Romney what his predecessor from Utah, Orrin Hatch, had called him: “a well-oiled weather vane.”
 It showed, too, that he was a treacherous one. Despite Romney and the chronically bumptious Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Trump’s allies are now in control of the Senate and its committees and the unearthing of the misconduct of the Obama Justice Department, intelligence services, and the Clinton campaign—as the attorney general-designate has pledged—are about to begin. . . .

The Green New Deal Is Everything That’s Wrong with Progressive Environmentalism

Cartoons added by TD

National Review

"Progressivism is the priority, not environmentalism."

"Ordinarily I wouldn’t write about a resolution introduced by a freshman member of Congress. But most freshmen don’t have 2.8 million Twitter followers, and most freshmen don’t have their first resolution covered by CNN, NBC, NPR, the Washington Post, Fox, USA Today, and virtually every other hard-news outlet in the country. It’s being talked about everywhere, so it’s worth addressing here.

"I’ve read it (it’s only 14 pages), and it’s a perfect symbol of the problems with progressive environmentalism. It’s a perfect representation of why so many Americans don’t heed alarmist warnings and why they reject the sweeping reforms demanded by the environmental Left.

"Why? Because when you read the document you quickly realize that progressivism is the priority, not the environment. In other words, environmentalism and progressivism are wrongly treated as fundamentally inseparable.

"Before we dig into the text, let me put my cards on the table. I believe that mankind negatively influences the climate (though the precise extent of that influence is debatable), that it is in our interests to prudently reduce carbon emissions — while also seeking economic development at home and abroad — and that sober-minded cost-benefit analyses of proposed environmental policies are often lost in the avalanche of alarmist rhetoric. Like many Americans, I’d call myself “climate-concerned.”

"And as a climate-concerned American, I find much of the most alarmist rhetoric around climate change facially unconvincing. Instead, it often looks as if the climate argument is pretext for justifying a host of other progressive policies, including progressive policies that have only the most attenuated relationship (if any relationship at all) to climate change. There are a few sure-fire tells — does the progressive climate-change policy inexplicably go after nuclear power? Does it move into condemnations of racism and sexism? Does it advocate redistributive economic policies?

"The Green New Deal hits the trifecta". . . . 

PoliZette The Pelosi Papers: What Exactly Was She Reading During Trump’s State of the Union?

I took it as studied disrespect. TD
Lifezette

Social media went wild with speculation about the speaker's nose-in-a-book demeanor

It’s likely this was the printout of Trump’s speech — after all, the president handed a copy of the address to Vice President Mike Pence and to the speaker at the start of the speech, as is tradition.
“A spokesperson for the California Democrat confirmed it was a copy of Trump’s speech, according to The New York Times,” as Fox News ^[1] noted in a piece on the topic." . . .

Nancy Pelosi shuffles papers, reads, and fixes dentures during SOTU. Tops it off with an ugly ‘F-you’ clap.

So very petty.

Tony Branco

‘Global warming’ is merely the latest environmental scare with the same solutions of wealth redistribution and central planning

Climate Depot  "Ocasio-Cortez is echoing the former UN Climate chief rhetoric. See: 

Flashback: UN climate chief Christiana Figueres seeks ‘centralized transformation’ that is ‘going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different’ in order to fight ‘global warming’

"But the “Green New Deal” is neither “green” or “new.” The environmental Left has been using green scares to push for the same solutions we see today — wealth redistribution, central planning, sovereignty limiting treaties — since the overpopulation scars of the 1960s and 1970s.

Ian Macfarlane

2019 Green New Deal proposed “solution”: FORMER OCASIO-CORTEZ CAMPAIGN AIDE CALLS ‘GREEN NEW DEAL’ A PLAN TO ‘REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH AND POWER’ FROM RICH TO POOR

Flashback: UN IPCC official admits UN seeks to ‘redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy’– ‘This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.’

Flashback 1974 proposed “solution” to battle environmental degradation: Different Environmental Scare, Same Solution: In 1974, future Obama science czar John Holdren proposed “redistribution of wealth” to battle environmental degradation. Holdren testified to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, “The neo-Malthusian view proposes conscious accommodation to the perceived limits to growth via population limitation and redistribution of wealth in order to prevent the ‘overshoot’ phenomenon. My own sympathies are no doubt rather clear by this point. I find myself firmly
in the neo-Malthusian camp.”

2019 Green New Deal proposed “solution”: ‘Green New Deal’ Unveiled: Entire economy would operate it – Govt would have ‘appropriate ownership stakes’ in ALL Green New Deal businesses

Flashback 1974 proposed solution to overpopulation: Different Environmental Scare, Same Solution: Amherst College professor Leo Marx warned in 1974 about the “global rate of human population growth. All of this is only to say that, on ecological grounds, the case for world government is beyond argument.”

"There is nothing new about the Green New Deal. “Global warming ” is merely the latest alleged environmental scare that is being substituted to push the same “solutions.” Instead of arguing the merits of the economic and political changes of the Green New Deal, they are using — in the words of Al Gore – a “torqued up” climate change scare to urge quick imposition of the policies to protect us from a climate emergency." . . .

Supporters of socialism in America's leadership

The only people more frightening to me than these are the voters who put them into office.

Lucianne is a great source of conservative material.

The Socialist That Could  . . . "The Republican Party has a secret weapon for 2020. It’s especially effective because it’s stealthy: The Democrats seem oblivious to its power. And the GOP needn’t lift a finger for it to work. All Republicans have to do is sit back and watch 29-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . . . exist." . . .

Rep. Tlaib: "Library and The Post Office are Socialism"  "When President Trump said that America would never be a socialist country, he offended the socialists. And the socialists resorted to the usual excuses."
 And they stay in business thanks to our tax money and the non-competitive pricing of stamps.
"Rep. Tlaib probably understands the Koran better than she understands socialism."

Venezuelans Who’ve Fled To America Have A Warning About Socialism 

Backers of a Green New Deal Embrace Their Fantasies 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey hold a news

 conference for their proposed “Green New Deal” on Capitol Hill

. . . "It’s not a very serious proposal. The goal is to eliminate the fossil-fuel industry over a decade and, perversely, phase out nuclear power over a slightly longer period. All of the jobs dependent on these industries would be replaced by government-guaranteed jobs."

“We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years,” the backers explain in an outline, “because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”

"Well, at least the plan isn’t too ambitious. Retrofitting “every building in America” can be done in 10 years, but eliminating all the gassy cows will take a bit longer. Maybe we’ll move them all to Hawaii, which with the near-abolition of airplanes will be effectively cut off from America anyway." . . .

Dem Senator Criticizes Trump For Attacking Socialism, Says It’s ‘Society Coming Together To Increase Standard Of Living For Seniors’
"Tell that to the folks in Venezuela eating zoo animals to stay alive." 

Ben Garrison