These people are nuts.

Via Twitchy:

Because climate change caused by excess carbon emissions is killing the planet and all, billionaire businessman, philanthropist and possible 2020 presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg helped finance this public art project that flew in giant hunks of ice from Greenland to London so people can watch them melt:

They want you to come and touch the ice and feel the global warming in action:

Keep reading…

There’s currently a holy jihad against the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Written in 1944, the holiday classic is currently verboten because it includes the line, “Say, what’s in this drink?” — apparently, to some, a sign that the male figure in the holiday tune was going to drug and rape the female figure.

I wasn’t alive 74 years ago, but then as now drugging women and then raping them was beyond frowned upon. Many things in gender relations changed in the intervening three-quarters of a century but I’m fairly confident that isn’t one of them.

Nor is it a predatory anthem where a man is constantly importuning a woman desperately, another argument used against the standard. Holiday favorites generally aren’t built on such a foundation, and you would hope people would realize this. Alas, no.

Radio stations across the country have taken it off their playlists. An indoor lacrosse team in Saskatchewan has made news for the indignation they’ve caused by showing support for the song, which is a sign of just how contentious the issue is because nobody cares about indoor lacrosse anywhere it’s played, much less Saskatchewan.

But, hey, if you need to hear “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” this Christmas but the Dean Martin version has been taken off of your local radio station’s playlist, here’s the Holderness Family with a 2018 version of the song:

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“Baby it’s cold outside” 2.0

😆😂🤣🤣🤣🤣

But, seriously😏#MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/45uQSmSzGF

— 🇺🇸🇨🇺🇺🇸MamaReg🇺🇸🇨🇺🇺🇸 (@MamaReg2) December 10, 2018

That about sums it up.

Most of the sturm und drink has to do with these four lines:

“So really I’d better scurry (Beautiful please don’t hurry).

“Well maybe just a half a drink more (I’ll put some records on while I pour).

“The neighbors might think (Baby it’s bad out there).

“Say what’s in this drink? (No cabs to be had out there)”

Again, let me reiterate that date rape drugs weren’t culturally acceptable in 1944. There weren’t misogynist, cisgendered white husbands laughing along with that and going, “Oh, that Dean Martin. He’s joking around about putting a barbiturate into her drink. Oh, ho ho. That cad.”

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Nor is the male figure a predator, which is another reason being given for banning the song.

“People might say, ‘Oh, enough with that #MeToo,’ but if you really put that aside and read the lyrics, it’s not something that I would want my daughter to be in that kind of a situation,” said a host at WDOK-FM in Cleveland, the first major station to ban the song.

“The tune might be catchy, but let’s maybe not promote that sort of an idea,” the host said.

I didn’t think that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” needed to be contextualized for the modern era, but apparently I’m wrong. So, here’s an abridged version.

I don’t think there’s any possible explanation of the song that doesn’t involve two grown adults. Both — I reiterate, both — want to be with one another, as can be understood by the context of the song; even the female parts are sung by someone who wants to be involved (“I wish I knew how … to break this spell,” the female protagonist sings).

So, what’s going on here? The female protagonist simply wants the male protagonist to do a little bit of pursuing. She’s not trying to get away. If that were the case, trust me, she’d find a cab. And that’s where the joke is in the parody version. It’s a guy who can’t take the hint. He doesn’t know how to pursue. There shouldn’t be anything inappropriate with pursuit as long as the individual being pursued is interested.

But that’s not what political correctness is saying in this day and age. Instead, they want the art of romance to look something like this:

All I’m saying is that if a Saskatchewan-based indoor lacrosse team wants me to go to the effort of protesting against them, this is what it ought to embrace. Then, I’d gladly stand in the glacial conditions outside some godforsaken Saskatoon arena with an angry placard, no matter how cold it was outside.

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He won’t get his weapons back.

Via Ammo Land:

On the 2nd of December, 2018, a 25-year-old man was at home with his girlfriend and a pit bull dog they were fostering. All of them were lying on a bed at about 6 p.m. The dog attacked the man. The man attempted to move the pit bull off of the bed. Instead, the dog bit the man on the left arm, and would not let go. From bostonglobe.com:

In a desperate attempt to end the attack, the man reached for a 9mm handgun he had in his nightstand and shot the dog, police said.

“The single shot stopped the attack and the dog died shortly afterwards,” police said in the statement. “The man is fully licensed to have firearms in Massachusetts.”

The man was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital to be treated for his injuries, police said.

Police took the man’s handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun, and ammunition found in the home “for safekeeping.” The dead pit bull was taken away by Yarmouth animal control officers, police said.

It is unknown if the legal gun owner will be charged in the case.

Massachusetts is the only state in the nation that still requires all firearms in a home to be locked up when not in use.[…]

The U.S. Supreme Court has not heard a gun storage case since Heller, in 2008. No other state has a gun storage law as restrictive as Massachusetts. But San Francisco and other California cities have stricter gun storage laws dating from 2007 and later.

The Ninth Circuit upheld the San Francisco law. In the Ninth Circuit ruling a judge said that modern safes and gun locks can be opened so quickly as to not interfere with the right to self defense in the home. From sfgate.com:

Because trigger locks and modern gun safes can be opened quickly, a stored or locked handgun “may be readily accessed in case of an emergency,” Judge Sandra Ikuta said in the appeals court’s ruling.

The Ninth Circuit judge said the law serves a government function of reducing gun related injuries and deaths resulting from an unlocked handgun in the home.

Keep reading…

It wasn’t global warming causing the wildfires.

Via San Diego Union Tribune:

Long before the Camp Fire raced through Northern California, claiming at least 85 lives and all but erasing the Gold Rush town of Paradise, state law required the three big power monopolies to file detailed strategies to prevent wildfires.

Under Senate Bill 1028, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric were supposed to prepare annual wildfire mitigation plans for reducing fire threats and identify who specifically would be responsible for implementing them.

The bill, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in September 2016, also called on the California Public Utilities Commission to review the filings every year, comment on the material and audit the companies to make sure they were being followed.

More than two years after the legislation was enacted, state regulators have yet to direct issue directives for the utilities to write the plans, let alone discuss or examine them for compliance — although SDG&E says its own fire plans comply with the new law.

While the commission delayed enforcing the new law, wildfires suspected of being caused by overhead powerlines and other utility equipment killed at least 125 people. They also destroyed 18,000 buildings and charred hundreds of square miles of the California landscape.

“They have done absolutely nothing in those two years,” state Sen. Jerry Hill, the San Mateo Democrat who introduced SB 1028, said of utility regulators.

“The unfortunate thing is we gave them that authority but we did not put a timeline on it,” Hill said. “We assumed it would be prioritized, but sadly it takes a tragedy to realign priorities — and that’s what we’ve seen — tragedy and devastation.”

Utilities commission spokeswoman Terrie Prosper did not respond to questions about why the agency has not required the plans.

In a response to a California Public Records Act request, commission lawyer Frederick Harris said regulators were “in the process of developing procedures to implement Senate Bill 1028” when Brown signed a different wildfire-related bill this past September.

Keep reading…

There’s some good news coming out of a court in Massachusetts and it deals with transparency by public officials when dealing with the public. The immediate benefactors of this particular case include James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas and some other folks who routinely tape police on the beat, but it should have implications for the public – and particularly journalists – around the country. The state has had a law on the books since the sixties which banned “taping wire and oral communications with the legislature,” but it had been applied to cover other public officials and even the police. Now some parts of the law appear to be heading for the scrap heap. (Washington Times)

A federal judge ruled Monday that Americans have a right to secretly record their public officials, including police, when they are engaged in their government duties.

U.S. District Chief Judge Patti B. Staris said a Massachusetts law banning secret recordings violates the First Amendment when it comes to government employees, rejecting the state’s claims that officials need some space to be able to operate without having to worry about being monitored.

“This is not to say that police and government officials have no privacy interests,” she wrote. “However, the diminished privacy interests of government officials performing their duties in public must be balanced by the First Amendment interest in newsgathering and information-dissemination.”

My initial reaction was to say that “secret recording” might be going a bit far on the transparency side, but on further reflection, I’ve come to conclude it was a rather silly idea. Perhaps more than most other citizens, public officials are the people who will reflexively act differently when they know a camera is on them. Sometimes surreptitious recording is probably the only way to catch them if they are misbehaving.

Whether it’s elected officials or the police, these efforts at preventing them from being recorded while performing their public duties have never made any sense. They’re doing their jobs and their jobs are paid for by the taxpayers. Unlike some members of the intelligence community, no contact between a cop, mayor or legislator with a member of the public is going to contain information which endangers the nation if it’s revealed.

In almost every case, if public officials don’t want these recordings released it’s because they were up to no good. And if so, the public is entitled to be informed about it. That doesn’t mean we can go record their private meetings in their offices or follow them into their homes. But if you take any of these jobs and go out in public, you should be aware that you’re subject to scrutiny.

David Krupa is a 19-year-old college freshman at DePaul University in Chicago. Krupa decided to get a jump-start on his political career (he’s studying political science) by running for alderman in the city’s 13th ward. What he got was a personal lesson in Democratic machine politics.

In order to qualify for the ballot, Krupa had to collect 473 valid signatures from ward residents. He did that but before he could turn them in, the Democratic political machine responded with a campaign that Krupa and his attorney believes was election fraud intended to keep him off the ballot. ABC 7 in Chicago reports:

Krupa collected 1,703, but said before he even turned them in, Quinn supporters turned in affidavits from 2,796 people who said they wanted to revoke their signatures for Krupa…

During an election board hearing Monday, Krupa and his attorney said only 187 of the people who signed a revocation affidavit actually signed his nominating petitions, meaning 2,600 were fraudulent.

“They had to have been told that it was for something it wasn’t for, or coerced into doing it somehow, and we actually had a lot of people who messaged me and said that was the case they only signed because it was brought to them three times a day for a week,” Krupa said.

ABC tried to ask the current alderman, Marty Quinn, about this campaign but reports that he “declined an interview request and later ducked out of a City Council committee meeting avoiding reporters.”

Quinn did eventually speak with WTTW and said, “I guess the better question is: a self-described, ‘day-one Trump supporter’ gets 1,700 signatures in the 13th Ward, without being disingenuous? That’s the question that comes to my mind.” And then he turned and walked away. There’s a video of his performance below.

For the record, I have no idea whether Krupa is a Trump supporter. His website is here and doesn’t say anything about national politics. But Krupa believes the Chicago’s political machine, run by Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, used fraud to attempt to keep him off the ballot:

Krupa alleges that Madigan precinct workers went door to door and tricked residents into signing the affidavits.

“What people have told me is that, when they were approached, it was for something like ‘verifying my signature,’” Krupa said. “Well it wasn’t for verifying their signature, it was for taking me off the ballot. I’ve had family friends who have known me their entire life who have signed one of those revocation papers because they were told it was something it wasn’t, and they are furious.”

So it appears that roughly 2,600 people, including people who know Krupa, were pressured or tricked into committing election fraud. The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass published a column last week explaining why Speaker Madigan’s likely involvement means no one involved in this campaign will ever be held to account:

The Goliath is the 13th Ward Democratic Organization run by House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, aka Boss Madigan, the most powerful politician in the state. Boss Madigan has long hand-picked his aldermen. He likes them loyal and quiet…

There is no litigation, yet, but election attorney Michael Dorf, who is representing Krupa, says this case is a “clown car of felonies.”

“You know the 13th Ward better than I do,” Dorf said. “This is clown school and election fraud. This is going way, way beyond the line. David is a huge underdog. Go ahead and beat him on Election Day, or do subtle fraud, like taking away yard signs, but when this number of false affidavits are filed, you’re talking fundamental fraud, epic fraud.”…

Dorf said that he will ask the elections board next week to refer the matter to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

But Foxx, a Democrat, won’t want to anger the Boss.

Neither will incoming Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who famously said he would not “go fishing” for corruption, and who also received a million dollars in Madigan political money.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Democrats to do something about other Democrats committing election fraud. That’s not the Chicago way.

There are liberals on social media as I write this speculating that this quote is evidence that … Graham has been compromised by the Russians and is now serving the same Kremlin masters that the president supposedly is. That theory is nonsense, of course.

But.

This is not the Grahamnesty I thought I knew. Ever since he went full beastmode at the Kavanaugh hearing he’s been a different man. Did McCain’s passing free him to be more of a populist? Is this some sort of strategic thing, backing Trump on high-profile standoffs with Democrats in hopes that POTUS will acquiesce on lower-profile matters like punishing the Saudis for the Khashoggi killing?

I feel like if this keeps up for much longer I’m going to start having misgivings about calling him “Grahamnesty.”

Complaining Pelosi will not accept a DACA deal for wall money, Graham said: “This is liberal arrogance and I have had enough of it. Take it on, stare it down. See what happens.”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 11, 2018

He kept it up on Twitter:

Great job sticking to your guns on border security, Mr. President!

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 11, 2018

Put DACA on the table and make them say NO to the Wall and DACA. #DigIn

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 11, 2018

DACA? Is either side talking seriously about a deal involving DREAMers? Seems kind of random for Graham to mention that — almost as if Benjy Sarlin is right:

There’s a lot of deserved focus on how R’s like Graham have become Trump allies, but a lot of that alliance is just them proposing what they already wanted pre-Trump and then claiming it’s a #MAGA move to own the libs https://t.co/W5Q9sM6mCY

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) December 11, 2018

Perhaps we’ll stick with the “Grahamnesty” sobriquet a bit longer.

Can’t fault Graham for looking ahead to some sort of face-saving compromise after the two parties deadlock and the government shuts down, though. One way out of that would be to agree on a middle-ground number for funding the wall. Trump wants $5 billion, Democrats have offered $1.6 billion for general “border security.” Maybe we end up with $3 billion or thereabouts for the wall — but Democratic voters won’t like that, even though it’ll mean Trump was forced to come down off his initial number. They just won the House despite immigration becoming a prominent issue in the final weeks due to the caravan, and the wall is Trump’s baby. They don’t want to give in on this and don’t think they should have to, especially if he’s playing shutdown hardball to achieve it. If they end up giving him anything for the wall Pelosi and Schumer will have to get something meaningful in return. Graham’s already laying the groundwork for it: DREAM amnesty for wall funding.

As for the politics, it was … unorthodox, shall we say, for Trump to say on camera at this afternoon’s meeting with Chuck and Nancy that he’d take the blame for shutting down the government over wall funding. Particularly with polls like this floating around:

Ed was right earlier, though, when he said that Trump will own the shutdown no matter what. He’s the one driving the standoff by demanding wall funding; it’d be silly for him to try to frame it differently. And to be honest, there’s no better moment for a shutdown to signal seriousness of purpose than right now. The GOP’s as far away from the next election as it can be and the opposing party is about to take over a house of Congress. An early test of wills will show Democrats up front that Trump intends to make border security a top issue over the next two years and that he won’t take no for an answer — if in fact he wins that test of wills.

Will he, though?

White House official tells me: “POTUS said that he wants $5 billion. It’s crystal clear, and we’re executing to it. It’s a red line. He’s willing to shut it down. He’s willing to own it.”

Senate GOP official tells me: “Trump will sign whatever McConnell and Ryan send him.”

— Elaina Plott (@elainaplott) December 11, 2018

The core virtue of Trump’s presidency to nationalists like Tucker Carlson is how he’s managed to shift the focus of the national conversation to nationalist priorities. The wall is Exhibit A on that point, and a shutdown to force wall funding would be a dramatic demonstration of how intent Trump is on doing it. If he ends up backing off or caving, it’ll leave the Tuckers of the world wondering whether there’s really any core virtue there after all. (Some, like Ann Coulter, are already wondering.) That’s the real political risk here to the president — not that swing voters will remember the shutdown when they go to the polls in 2020 but that populists will remember that it failed to produce any meaningful border improvements, if in fact it fails to do so. He’d better be careful.

An imam who frequently criticizes radical Islam was sent an intimidating email by Twitter’s legal team telling him that he broke Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

The tweet that spurred the email was made last month by Imam Mohammad Tawhidi, a moderate Muslim from Australia, who called for that country’s government to investigate the mosque that a knife attacker attended in Melbourne.

“Investigate the Mosque and the Imam that delivers these Jihadist sermons,” Tawhidi tweeted Nov. 9.

The police must investigate which Mosque this terrorist attended for Friday Prayers today. I am serious. Investigate the Mosque and the Imam that delivers these Jihadist sermons. pic.twitter.com/sFoHzekx0k

— Imam Mohammad Tawhidi (@Imamofpeace) November 9, 2018

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This tweet broke Pakistan’s law, according to the email Tawhidi received from Twitter last week.

The email said “Twitter has received official correspondence” indicating Tawhidi’s tweet “is in violation of Pakistan law.”

Twitter’s Legal Department has sent me an Email informing me that I have broken Pakistan’s Law. I have attached the Tweet in question, so judge for yourselves.

I am not from Pakistan nor am I a Pakistani citizen. Pakistan has no authority over what I say. Get out of here. pic.twitter.com/wsVacLXpJm

— Imam Mohammad Tawhidi (@Imamofpeace) December 3, 2018

“You may wish to consult legal counsel about this matter,” the email read.

Any email that advises you to get a lawyer is intimidating.

Fortunately, it’s an empty threat because Pakistan’s ridiculous laws have no jurisdiction over someone living in Australia.

“I am not from Pakistan nor am I a Pakistani citizen,” Tawhidi tweeted. “Pakistan has no authority over what I say. Get out of here.”

I would enjoy breaking Pakistan’s Laws if they had any in the first place. https://t.co/76YzhQs2qS

— Imam Mohammad Tawhidi (@Imamofpeace) December 5, 2018

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While Tawhidi appears to be safe from Pakistani authorities, it’s concerning that Twitter seems to be doing the dirty work of a corrupt Islamist regime.

Tawhidi is not from Pakistan, and his tweet didn’t violate Twitter’s terms of service. The purpose of Twitter’s email appears to be to intimidate the peaceful imam on behalf of Pakistan.

In August, the Pakistani government threatened to block the social media giant if it didn’t crack down on “objectionable content,” according to Pakistan Today.

It doesn’t seem like Twitter is ready to make such a move just yet, but its intimidating emails may scare people into staying quiet about radical Islamic terrorists.

This is scary. Twitter is helping an authoritarian regime harass opponents of terrorism.

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