Arguing with Idiots; Consensus Edition

Timothy Birdnow

A fight on Facebook.

Mark Donka says:

Climate is changing and has been for years, there are cycles of weather . Why do we have more artic and Antarctic sea ice this year? Didn't Gore say it would all be gone by 2014??

Cindy L. Helford says:

Stop being a lacking-knowledge climate change denier - 98% of climate scientists agree. https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

I reply:

Sorry Cindy L. Helfond but your claim of "climate change consensus" is a lie.

You ignore the Oregon Petition, which featured over 30,000 scientists who disagree with this "consensus". You ignore this list. https://electroverse.net/the-list-scientists-who-publicly-disagree-with-the-current-consensus-on-climate-change/

There is this. https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/  and https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/10/climate-change-no-its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle/ and https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/climate-change/the-bogus-consensus-argument-on-climate-change/ and https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/02/david_friedman_14.html

The studies that have been done that make that ridiculous claim either looked at papers and said "they don't specifically say there is no climate change" as in historian Naomi Oreskes, or they did a survey and asked if the climate was warming and if humans had a hand in it. No scientist would deny either, but that is a far cry from accepting the alarmist view you espouse. Roger Pielke Sr., for example, would agree with that statement even though he's considered a "denier". He thinks land use changes are a big part of the modest planetary warming.

You can't get 97% agreement among scientists at the best of times. This is a bald-faced lie.

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Clausian Physics

Timothy Birdnow

Here is the physics of Santa Claus. Please note the difficulties involved.

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Father Failure

This from Alexis Worlock:

Tim adds:

Amen. There has been a war on boys and masculinity and sheeple like this father go right along with it. The fact is children have to be tuaght everything. You don't just let a child do whatever he or she wants. That's what parenting is about. Strong men need to teach their sons how to be men. Abdicating that responsibility is a cruelty to the child.

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India Rising

Frank lLsee

U.S. LNG Exports Heading for an All-Time High

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Santa Cross

Timothy Birdnow

Opening Statements in the Claus Trial:

Ladies and gentleman of the jury
a moment of your time
regards the case of old Khris Kringle
The kingpin of Christmas crime

The accused he goes by many names
Santa Claus or old St. Nick
But rest assured these are no games
This Kringle is quite sick

And now we'll have the charges read
a litany of crime
no worse a man was ever bred
This Santa is a slime

He lives outside our jurisdiction
on international land
he completely ignores our border restriction
and sneers at our commands

He doesn't have a green card or register his sleigh
we charge him with these crimes, oh jurors,
for starters on this day

But this is not the only evil of the rotten Mr. Claus
We have only just begun to give the litany of his flaws

On 25 December Mr. Kringle did and then
fly an unregistered vehicle into our airspace sans flight plan

Luck was with the Kringle as he should have been shot down
By F-15 Tomcat fighters as he slithered into town

And now we come to another charge
against the crooked Kris
and this one is just much too large
for anyone to miss

I submit to you and swear it's true
for your careful consideration
the charge of number four
there's more than meets enumeration

Kringle did upon this night, for everyone to see
let the record show for all to know
he trespassed on private property

And he stole Christmas cookies and he drank up  their tea
he left a pile of refuse
then the criminal did flee

It's true, it's true
I say to you
we have the affidavits
testimony sworn
without reservation
by those who freely gave it

And how did he acquire all of the stuff the Claus he gave?
Word on the street is it was made by folks he had enslaved

He calls them elves and makes them work in his lair up at the pole
for endless hours of every day
no pay, not even coal!

And furthermore this Claus is known
to leer at children in the night
He likes 'em young, not grown, quite slight
I say this isn't right!

Yes good people of the jury
the charges we did file
we ask your rage and righteous fury
and convict this pedophile

And he smoke tobacco from a pipe
which is against the law
in public places he puffs away
it billows from his maw

But the charges are not yet done
against this foul and evil crook
a man so bad we all should shun
At this photo take a look

That photo is of Kringle
hard at work at Satan's task
You can see to your great horror
He does not wear a Covid mask

Yes the man is such a misanthrope
He goes from scene to scene
He never touches any soap
he spreads Covid Nineteen

He doesn't social distance; kids sit upon his knee
he never wears a mask when out
though they're cheap and often free

And as he is quite chubby
in fact morbidly obese
he flies around the country
despite our orders to decease

Never there was such a man
so villainous and vile
so crooked and insidious
so very out of style

This crime lord is quite evil
a man to make one shiver
that's why dear members of the jury
you should send him up the river

That concludes my opening statement.

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Biden FDA to Allow Abortion by Mail

Timothy Birdnow

With Roe v. Wade in trouble and states passing laws that threaten the abortion industry, Joe Biden's FDA is stepping in to save the day for child butchers.

They are going to allow the abortion pill to be sent by mail thus circumventing state laws.

So typical of the Left; they can't win fairly so they find a way to cheat.

I guess you'll be able to get a ballot to vote along with your abortion in the future.

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Covid and High Blood Pressure

Timothy Birdnow

Well duh!

COVID-19 Pandemic Associated With Higher Blood Pressure Across the United States


Everyone was sitting at home eating salty snacks and getting fat. And they weren't going to the doctor. Nor exercising out of fear of catching Covid from others.

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Fewer Violent Tornadoes

From Frank Lasee

Violent Tornadoes

"The average of the pre-doppler period is 10.5 violent tornadoes per year. Since 1995 the average is 6.4 violent tornadoes per year. 2018 became the first year in the modern record to have zero violent tornadoes tallied.”

Tim adds:

No doubt we are finding more tornadoes with doppler than we had previously too. AND we are packed in more densely, building out on plains and the like so we probably are experiencing more violent tornadoes than in the past, even while we have better defenses. It leads me to conclude we actually are in a quiet period contrary to what the media tries to claim.

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Epic Fail for Vaccine

Timothy Birdnow

Who would have guessed?

Study Suggests Antibodies from Two Moderna Doses Less Effective at Neutralizing Omicron

But, but, but...we must all get vaccinated. That is the way to end the pandemic!

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Fear Itself

Richard Cronin

Nikola Tesla dabbled in high voltages with one potential application as a global power distribution system.

That is, high voltage arcs could be used to energize the ionosphere. Power consumers would send up balloons carrying cables so they could conduct power back down.

This concept resulted in HAARP for Star Wars. High frequency Active Auroral Research Program. The original antenna array is just outside Gakona Alaska. You can see it on Google Maps. The application was to energize the ionosphere with high frequency radiation. A Soviet ICBM passing thru the ionosphere would serve for an early detection system.

Bernard Englund worked on HAARP and obtained several patents for using HAARP to modify the weather. Something about moving around the jet stream.

Of course, once the lunatics of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) get their hands on a new toy, they aren’t going to give it up. They just tweak it and find new applications.

The newer models are said to be on U.S. Navy SBX-1 ships shrouded by a large radar dome.

Have the lunatics tweaked a more powerful HAARP to cause earthquakes and hurricanes ? Who knows ? Jesse Ventura says the upgraded HAARP is used for mind control but that’s even too weird for me.

Playing God: HAARP Weather Control - a Terrifying Look at the Control of Weather Warfare

Tim adds:

Then, of course, they can blame it on Global Warming.

In Michael Crichton's novel "State of Fear" Crichton theorized just that; the Climate Change people were using technology like this to promote their internationalist agenda, disrupting weather patterns to provide disasters that would help stampede  the public. Crichton said he originally wanted to write a disaster novel about Global Warming but realized it was a lie during his research. He came to understand what was happening. He realized the Ruling Class was using fear to control the population (which substituted for guilt - the old 19th century method, which substituted for honor, the still older method of societal control.) There had to be endless crisis. As he said, most of these were generated at the University level, then disseminated by the media. The public was made to fear, and in so doing cede control over their own lives to the Ruling Class.

Climate Change was the atom bomb of fear scams. They were willing (and are willing) to do anything to make it work. I would say Covid is another example.

At any rate, they used this balloon technique in the novel to kill children in a national park.

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It’s time to abolish ‘emergency’ COVID-19 powers

Dana Mathewson

COVID is over. Oh, not with Anthony Fauci. Not with the media. Not with the sour-faced Karens who have enjoyed the sense of meaning — and power — it’s given them. But with normal people, especially outside the big urban areas, it’s over.

The Atlantic scandalized its readers by reporting that this week. In an article titled "Where I Live, No One Cares About COVID,” Matthew Walther wrote: "No one cares. Literally speaking, I know that isn’t true, because if it were, the articles wouldn’t be commissioned. But outside the world inhabited by the professional and managerial classes in a handful of major metropolitan areas, many, if not most, Americans are leading their lives as if COVID is over, and they have been for a long while.”

And with good reason. I confess that in the early days, I was a COVID hawk. With China reporting a 4 to 5 percent mortality rate, there seemed reason. (In fact, I should have reflected more on the untrustworthiness of information from China, especially after the experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship suggested that COVID was a lot less scary than we were told.)

But science, and rationality in general, is about changing your opinions when you learn new facts. And what we’ve learned is that COVID is somewhat worse than the flu but not nearly bad enough to justify the enormous, expensive and disruptive changes we’ve endured.

In fact, the damages wrought by lockdowns and social isolation — medical, in terms of reduced exercise, missed medical screenings and increased drug and alcohol consumption, as well as psychological, in loneliness and anxiety— may have been worse than those wrought by COVID itself.

Also, most of the nostrums offered by the experts and Karens are nonsensical and don’t work. Masks outdoors, where COVID doesn’t really spread anyway? Plexiglas screens everywhere? Shut-down public water fountains and a wide variety of service changes in hotels, restaurants and airplanes that are attributed to COVID but really about saving money?

People have seen through this, and they’re over it. (And not just in the United States — a friend in London reports that everyone there is cheerfully going unmasked, crowding into pubs and generally ignoring whatever rules remain nominally in force.)

[...]

And most people by now have had COVID or know many people who have. It’s not smallpox, it’s not Ebola; in many people it’s not as bad as the flu. In 40 percent of cases, a study recently published in JAMA Network Open found, it’s entirely asymptomatic.

[...]

Amtrak, facing broad resistance from its workers, suspended its vaccine mandate for employees. And Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said no to a mask mandate, declaring, "The emergency is over.”

It is. And now that it’s over, we need to claw back all the power seized by various institutions in the name of emergency. And when that’s done, we need a searching inquiry into how the power was exercised — an inquiry with consequences.

It’s time.

His next-to-last paragraph really spells out what needs to be done now.

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Making a List, Checking it Twice

Warner Todd Huston

Where do some of the biggest corps. stand....

Santa's List of Businesses that are Naughty and Nice to Conservatives

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Ramsay Flees to Texas

Timothy Birdnow

The ship is sinking. Why wait until it goes down?

T.V. Chef Gordon Ramsey Ditches California, Moves Restaurant HQ to Texas

Sadly he'll probably bring his L.A. employees with him - and add more Democrats to the Texas voter rolls.

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Electric Tow Trucks

Timothy Birdnow

Electric tow trucks? Fuggitaboutit!

How Far Can You Tow with an Electric Truck

Turns out you can't tow that far. The range drops from 292 miles to 123 miles.

Don't break down out of town folks.

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Dutch PM Tells Public Not to Cuddle Grandkids as Christmas Is Cancelled in the Netherlands

Dana Mathewson

Christmas has been cancelled in the Netherlands, with the Dutch prime minister telling the public they cannot cuddle their grandchildren.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte has told the Dutch public that there would be "no cuddling the grandkids” this Christmas after the government effectively cancelled Christmas in The Netherlands.

Lockdown restrictions in the country were extended by the government on Tuesday, and are now only set to expire after the holidays on January 14th.

According to De Telegraaf, the extended measures include the so-called "avondlockdown” or "evening lockdown”, which forces restaurants, cafés, and non-essential retail to close between the times of 5pm and 5am. Supermarkets meanwhile are only allowed to remain open until 8pm.

The government has also requested for schools to close a week early, with primary schools to be closed for the holidays from Monday, and that people work from home where possible.

"This is not the message we wanted to bring at Christmas,” the prime minister told the public. "At the same time, it can’t be a surprise.”

Regarding his demand that there be "no cuddling the grandkids beneath the Christmas tree” for grandparents, Rutte was conciliatory but unapologetic.

"I understand that this is a bitter message,” Politico reports the PM as saying. "But it is absolutely necessary to minimize contact between kids and the elderly.”

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Biden Funds the Media

Steven Chase

It really takes balls to openly pay bribes to the Media industry for favorable political coverage. Breathless corruption.

Tim adds:

I would add this is probably unconstitutional. The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law Congress Shall Make No Law... respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." This both establishes a press and abridges free speech by empowering only some approved voices. There is a reason why America never had a BBC. If you subsidize something you by default abridge it's competitor. As Warren Burger said in Wooley v. Maynard 19777

"The right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of the broader concept of ‘individual freedom of mind."

Funding certain media outlets is essentially compelled speech. https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/933/compelled-speech

From the article:

The compelled speech doctrine sets out the principle that the government cannot force an individual or group to support certain expression. Thus, the First Amendment not only limits the government from punishing a person for his speech, it also prevents the government from punishing a person for refusing to articulate, advocate, or adhere to the government’s approved messages.

The Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) is the classic example of the compelled speech doctrine at work.

In this case, the Court ruled that a state cannot force children to stand, salute the flag, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The justices held that school children who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, for religious reasons, had a First Amendment right not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or salute the U.S. flag.

In oft-cited language, Justice Robert H. Jackson asserted, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

More recently, in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (2006), Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. reiterated the essence of the compelled speech principle: "Some of this Court’s leading First Amendment precedents have established the principle that freedom of speech prohibits the government from telling people what they must say.”

The Court also employed the compelled speech doctrine in Wooley v. Maynard (1977) to rule that state officials could not punish a man for covering the state’s motto — "Live Free or Die” — on his license plate. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger declared, "The right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of the broader concept of ‘individual freedom of mind.’ ”

In more recent years, the Court recognized the reach of the compelled speech principle in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston (1995), in which it ruled that government officials could not force parade organizers to accept a gay and lesbian group and its messages as part of its event. To do so would infringe on the private group’s autonomy and right to disseminate its own messages.
Can government force groups to financially support certain programs?

The compelled speech principle also is at issue when the government attempts to force individuals or groups to financially support certain messages or programs. The Court refers to these as compelled-subsidy cases.

In Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977), the Court ruled that a teachers’ union had no authority, consistent with the First Amendment, to force dissenting nonmembers to fund activities not germane to the union’s central purpose of collective bargaining.

In a similar vein, in Keller v. State Bar of California (1990), the Court ruled that California’s state bar could not force attorneys to contribute to certain political and ideological causes that it supported. "Compulsory dues may not be expended to endorse or advance a gun control or nuclear weapons freeze initiative,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote for the Court. He added, "At the other end of the spectrum petitioners have no valid constitutional objection to their compulsory dues being spent for activities connected with disciplining members of the Bar or proposing ethical codes for the profession.”

End excerpt.

This is forcing America to fund speech.

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Another Fake Story in the News?

Timothy Birdnow

I call bullshit on this.

k]Kentucky candle factory staff with more than 100 workers on shift 'would have been FIRED if they'd left as tornado bore down' leaving eight dead and ten missing

First, what would a British newspaper know about what happened in Kentucky?

They are getting this from one or two  sources reported by the notoriously liberal NBC.

I would add Kentucky is a Right-to-Work state and the press hates them for it. This strikes me as a tool to bludgeon Kentucky into repealing RTW.

Workers may well have asked to leave well before the storms hit. There was no reason to believe this particular town would get slammed so hard. Notice they did not say this happened within minutes of the storm coming. These employees probably wanted the whole night off based on forecasts.

I don't know any employer who would refuse shelter to employees during a tornado.

The article states:

So, if a tornado was coming would it be a good idea to let employees go out into it?

This article strikes me as having ulterior motives.

The company denies this, I might add.

And who is going to obey such an order if they fear for their lives? Jobs are plentiful right now and nobody is going to risk dying for a crappy job in a candle factory.

I do not believe this story for a minute.

Almost all the news we get these days is fake.

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Shrieking Squaw

This from Lance Sjogren:

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No, Tornadoes and Storms are NOT Increasing Due to Global Warming

Timothy Birdnow

It was inevitable; people would blame the recent inclement weather on Global Warming.

A Facebook friend did this and I retorted as follows:

Not true. In fact, we are coming off a very quiet period for hurricanes, and as this shows the number and intensity of tornaodes has not increased. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/12/catastrophic-december-tornadoes-slam-mid-mississippi-valley/ Mainly what is happening is that a.the media reports on it far more than they used to and b.people are building in places where they ought not. The end result is it LOOKS that way to the casual observer (who gets his news from the mainstream media). But in fact there is no net increase in either intensity or frequency of these storms. NOAA admits this too. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/mccarthy/tor30yrs.pdf There has been an uptick in weak tornadoes - a very minor uptick - in the last decade. Mostly the media hypes this to terrify the public. As Michael Crichton pointed out, the modern social mechanism for controlling the public is fear, and that is ginned up by the media in just this fashion.

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Omar's "Anti-Islamophobia" Bill

Timothy Birdnow

This from New Right Network:

Ilhan Omar’s bill requiring the State Department to combat "Islamophobia” has passed. Omar would like us to believe that "Islamophobia” is as much a threat around the world as antisemitism, and she wants the federal government to monitor, to report on, and to fight the spread of this "hatred.”

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