Scary but true: the Green New Deal is coming

See yoo

Or so says Robert Spencer, and it’s dispiriting to think he’s probably right.

Democratic socialist wunderkind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been receiving torrents of ridicule for the “Green New Deal” program she unveiled with great fanfare and media adulation on Thursday, and it’s well deserved. But conservatives may come to find that laughter catching in their throats: as stupid as it is, and as disastrous as it would obviously be if it were implemented, many powerful figures on the Left aren’t laughing. And it’s not in the least impossible that they'll bring that disaster upon the nation by trying to implement it.

…. Cortez really [has no] any significant civic, historical, or economic knowledge. But none of it matters. She is a darling of the Leftist media and a rising star in the Democrat Party. Netflix paid ten million dollars for a documentary about her. Al Jazeera has already anointed her the next president of the United States.

Is she better equipped to be a bartender (which she was not long ago) than a member of the House of Representatives? Of course. But that won’t stop her rise. The Left ridiculed Donald Trump and called him stupid all through 2016, and he was elected president. What Ocasio-Cortez has on her side is the fact that powerful people on the Left take her seriously.

For all its talk (in the FAQs provided by Ocasio-Cortez’s office) of becoming able within the next few years “to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes” and providing “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to
work,” the most arresting passage in the entire Green New Deal plan is this: Nearly every major Democratic presidential contender says they back the Green New deal including: Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Jeff Merkley, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jay Inslee.

Those Democrat leaders aren’t laughing Ocasio-Cortez out of the room for announcing a plan that includes the intention to “upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.” They’re nodding their heads and signing on. They don’t think it will make them look just as dimwitted as Ocasio-Cortez to endorse a plan that calls for constructing “high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary." Those railway bridges connecting California with Hawaii, Australia, and Japan are going to be, like, awesome.

They’re happy to lend their names to a plan that calls for “a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases,” in other words, destruction of the existing automobile industry, as well as the aeronautics industry. And the prospect of a massive carnage of “farting cows” doesn’t seem to trouble them.

The Green New Deal as Ocasio-Cortez has presented it will never be implemented in full, because the United States would go bankrupt and a new civil war would break out before all of its recommendations could be put into place. But that won’t stop Democrats from moving in the direction of a unitary socialist state in which all means of production are in the hands of the government – for the good of the climate and the people, of course.

Global warming High Priestesses' private jet almost crashes on junket to Mexico

Jenifer Aniston and Courtney Cox wanted to Mexico to attend a birthday party but were forced to return after Aniston’s private jet plane suffered mishap

Jennifer Aniston and her Friends co-star Courteney Cox were jet-setting to Mexico for a birthday trip but were forced  to make a terrifying emergency landing on Friday.

The two actresses were in Aniston’s private jet bound for Cabo San Lucas around 11am when the plane lost a wheel during take-off at LAX airport, according to the FAA.

The plane made it all the way down to Mexican airspace but turned around back to Ontario, California after crew members deemed it wasn't safe to land. 

Aniston, who just turned 50 on February 11, was with 54-year-old Cox, actress Amanda Anka, screenwriter Molly Kimmel, and eight others on board the Gulfstream Aerospace IV plane. 

One might think that, because both actresses speak out so loudly and often on the dangers of global warming and the urgent need too end it now (just Google either of their names with “climate change), that this near miss might have given them occasion to pause and wonder what affect their personal behavior might be having on their climate. If so, you would be wrong:

[The Airport crew] speedily removed the luggage from the faulty private plane and transferred it onto another bigger private jet.  

Funny for lawyers, but a cautionary tale for all who dare set pen to paper, or fingers to keyboards

And the horse you rode in on

From Glenn Reynold’s Instapundit:

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

PROOFREAD, PEOPLE! PROOFREAD!  Oops! ‘Meh’ parenthetical ended up in published federal decision.

A federal judge’s case dismissal is getting some attention because of an apparent note-to-self that didn’t get removed from the published order.

The writer was apparently dissatisfied with a statement summarizing the requirements for a false advertising claim. The parenthetical on page 11 reads: “(Meh I need a better rule statement than this.)”.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel of San Diego signed the Feb. 5 order, but one of Curiel’s law clerks likely wrote the “meh” phrase, according to the Recorder.

Reynold’s own comment:

I had to warn a student last semester about including snarky statements in drafts, with the expectation of editing them out later. Sooner or later, I warned her, you’ll miss one. Back when I was practicing law, there was a partner who somehow let a footnote reading “CITE USUAL CRAP HERE” get into a brief.

UPDATE: The infamous “Bedbug Letter”, as confirmed by (the sometimes reliable) Snopes:

The tale of the “bedbug letter,” in which a complaining business customer receives a seemingly personalized and polite written apology in response to his correspondence — marred by the inadvertent inclusion of crude instructions from a manager to send the recipient “the standard SOB letter” — has been a part of contemporary lore since at least the 1920s.

Did a real event spark off this legend? Possibly. Folklore Jan Harold Brunvand reported on a 1992 letter from the corresponding secretary of the George Mortimer Pullman Encomium Society in which it was claimed the bed bugging took place on 4 March 1889 to a Mr. Phineas P. Jenkins, a salesman of pig-iron products. After spending a night in the company of far too many bedbugs (which in my book would number “one”), Jenkins penned a note of complaint to George M. Pullman, President of the Pullman Palace Car Company. In return, Jenkins supposedly received a wonderfully detailed and heartfelt apology from Pullman. Its effect was undermined, however, by the enclosure of his original letter, across which Pullman had handwritten “Sarah — Send this S! O! B! the ‘bedbug letter.'”

Credit: Snopes

First, we let Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez present her Eighth Grade social studies project to the nation, now we have 8-year-olds advising legislators . Why not?

Of course she might grow out of it. What then?

Eight-year-old lectures Hartford legislature committee members, informing them that “30 of my 33 classmates oppose bear hunting”.

Well: if 30 third graders agree on an issue, who are we to disagree? Bless their hearts, but “out of the mouths of babes” sentiment notwithstanding, I’d prefer that those who claim to be capable of governing spend their tax-funded time discussing current issues with fellow adults. I realize that would leave Occasional Cortex out in the hallway, but is that a bad thing?

Jim Carrey and spouse colluded with Russians?

Die, you little bastids!

Russian trolls accused of fermenting anti-vaccine campaign

The same Russian social media trolls accused of meddling in the 2016 US election may be to blame for the deadly measles outbreak across Europe last year, according to a new report.

Scientists believe the St. Petersburg troll farm also pumped out anti-vaccination propaganda, contributing to the outbreak that killed 72 people and infected more than 82,000, Radio Free Europe reported.

The FBI and major media is undoubtedly looking into this as I write

[UPATE: Goddamnit, I meant fomenting, I wrote fomenting, and the auto-spell “corrected’ it to “fermenting’ without my notice or permission — in fact, it did so again while I wrote this addendum. I don’t know how to turn off this bonus feature, but I’m going to find out.]

UPDATE II: Apparently “ferment” can be used in the same sense, according to the Oxford dictionary, so perhaps the auto-speller was merely substituting its own judgement.

I hope, for Greenwich's sake, that's there's still a market for homes like this

359 North Street is new to the market today, priced at $7.495 million. Built in 1903, it was, I think, one of the twin homes built for the daughters of the man who built his own house up the road, on the corner of Dingletown and North, but I’m sure more knowledgeable readers will correct me if I’m wrong.

I think its price is high, even though it includes a separate building lot in its 2.5 acres — the beautiful yard, so close to town, only adds to its attractiveness, and who would want to destroy that? — but sheesh, this is such a special house, compared to a modern spec house. Or it is to me, but I’m older than our current buyers’ pool. The seller is a hugely-successful CEO, retired now, but he’s a nonagenarian; while I’m about midway between his age and that of many of those who are our buyers now, my tastes run with the owner’s generation, and tastes have changed radically.

Amazon calls it quits

(I had an entire post on this subject and it failed to “save”. Sheesh. I really don’t want to recreate the entire post, so here’s a brief summary of my thoughts:

State subsidies to businesses bad, but Amazon’s promise of 25,000 new jobs over ten years might have been worth it, especially because they promised to work with local community colleges to train, and hire graduates from this school, thus offering them skilled tech and white collar careers. Better than being hamburger helpers.

Polls showed that Black and Hispanic residents of Queens approved the project, white Manhattanites disapproved. A victory for OCA’s campaign contributors, if not her constituents.

Amazon was crazy to consider immersing itself into NYC’s swamp of corrupt politicians, unions and “community organizers”, all demanding a piece of the action, and its shareholders are lucky that it realized that.

The war goes on. Just as this same crowd blocked Walmart from opening stores in the Bronx and Queens, thereby condemning the city’s poor residents to shop exclusively at high-priced bodegas and small retailers (at lest one study has shown that families have saved $3-4,000 per year because of Walmart), they are now turning their anti-capitalist, pro-socialist fury on driving Amazon out of the city entirely.

Screw ‘em: the people are getting what they voted for.

What's next, membership in the Communist Party? Doing business with Israel?

the last hoorah

LA passes ordinance barring contractors from working for the city if they hold an NRA membership

The Los Angeles City Council voted yesterday to require companies who want to contract with the city to disclose their relationships with the National Rifle Association.

Welcome to the new normal. 

Prospective contractors now must disclose under affidavit any contracts or sponsorships they or their subsidiaries have with the NRA. The city has similar policies about companies involved in the construction of President Trump’s proposed border wall and over the historic investment in or profits from slavery.

The ordinance on the NRA was sought by Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who cited several recent mass shootings in the U.S. At Tuesday’s meeting, he said the NRA has “been a road block to gun safety reform at every level of government now for several decades.”

A few years ago I’d have said this ordinance would be immediately struck down as unconstitutional on its face. These days, who knows? But advocates of laws like this should remember that majorities shift, and assaults on the First Amendment can come back to bite them.

Florida Man: does he ever slow down?

Love at first bite

Florida man dressed in dog costume admits to having sex with his pet husky “Ember”, filming it, and posting it online!

I haven’t checked, but the video is probably no longer available on You Tube.

(Update: I hadn’t realized, until now, that there’s something in the diagnosis manual called “zoophilia”. Give it a decade, and it will doubtless be considered just another mainstream “identity”. Remember, biology is a matter of mind over science — if Florida Man self-identifies as a husky, who are we to question?).

And there’s this, which should come as a relief to almost everyone: “A Chihuahua was also removed from Nichols home”.

Works for me

Screw your $1.3

Ted Cruz: use El Chapo’s $14 billion to ay for the wall.

Fitting.