Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

A family affair

Note: This story can also be found with others at Dave’s blog, The Old Badger Speaks

It’s a Family Affair

By: DS Klausler

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

“God’s not on our side because he hates idiots, also.”

Jackson Guðmundur Zorch ignored the ringing phone displaying “Possible Spam.” Just a coincidence those bank forms were created requiring a confirmed phone contact. Lying sell-out assholes. The second, third and fourth calls all had a familiar area code; they too were ignored. No voicemail was left… shocking. The final call (same area code) matched on his contacts – his demented sister – who he hoped never to hear from again. Frowned at. Ignored. Eventual voicemail:

“Pardon the intrusion Jackie, at your earliest convenience, would you ring me up. There has been a bit of an event regarding your father. Toot-a-loo.”

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Wait for it … wait for it …

It came on Saturday, courtesy of the Washington Post (Scientists say Arctic warming could to blame for blasts of extreme cold). I knew it was coming. They say that our recent Arctic blast is caused by … climate change.

The article is typical of this kind of nonsense, full of qualifiers, as in “…understanding any link between planetary warming and extreme cold remains a work in progress,” and …observations of jet stream patterns have not confirmed the hypothesis.” and “there’s still a lot of mixed feelings in the scientific community, though there is some tantalizing evidence that there is some ‘there’ there.”

What is this “tantalizing evidence”? They do not say. They are vague except in explaining that there is an area of low pressure normally parked over the Arctic, surrounded by bands of fast-flowing air. When the winds are strong, the band is tight, and the cold air is kept in check. Often in winter, the vortex acts like a wobbling top, and Arctic air escapes and invades areas south, like Canada and the Northern US.

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The end of snow

This amazing winter storm reminded me of David Viner, “climate scientist” and part of the mythical “97% consensus”, who said as follows:

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said:

That was in 2000, almost 23 years ago.

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Dave Foreman, RIP

I just learned yesterday that Dave Foreman had died last September at the age of 75. This got me to thinking and wondering about him, how genuine he was, and how real the group he helped found, Earth First!, was. I long suspected that EF! was an Intel front, used to demonize real environmental groups, a large blackwashing effort. The group was certainly divisive. I remember sitting at a restaurant up in northwest Montana, where a cooler sported a bumper sticker that said

Earth First!
We’ll mine the other planets later.

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A flight of fancy

MBE stands for Order of the British Empire. It is an honor handed out to civilians on a semi-annual basis, by Queen Elizabeth, and now by King Charles. I do not follow it. 

The Beatles were given MBEs in 1965.  I was listening to Conan O’Brien discussing this, and he noted that John Lennon had given his back in 1969 while Ringo still wore his (on his forehead) even as it was covered with gravy stains. That’s Conan.

Lennon did some highfalutin excuses for his act of returning the medal. He said it was due to British activity in Biafra and for British support of the US in Vietnam, and, sardonically, because his song Cold Turkey was falling in the charts. I’d never thought about it before, always taking things at face.

We know from following the work of Sage of Quay, Mike Williams, that (as I had long suspected) the Beatles did not perform their studio music live, did not play their instruments on albums, and did not write most of the songs, maybe none of them. (Sage has a Billy Shears fetish, but I forgive him that.) George Harrison referred to his early work as “shit,” so I give him that. He actually did write that stuff. But Lennon and McCartney, no.

An idealist is a person who strives to be consistent, to be the same person on the outside as on the inside. For instance, Ted Danson, who played Sam Malone on Cheers, at an event honoring the entire cast, made it a point of removing his hairpiece so we could all see he was balding. “I’ll be darned,” I thought. “The man is an idealist, and could not stand the idea that he was not true to his real self in his outer appearances.”

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A malicious intrusion

Yesterday morning at 1:20 AM, all three phones in our house (one landline and two mobiles) rang at once. I did not answer, but this message was left on our mobiles:

“Due to police activity, there is a threat to your safety. If you are indoors, remain there. If you are outdoors, go indoors and remain there until further notice. Do not go outside and do not evacuate the area. Close and lock all doors and windows. Close all blinds and curtains and stay away from windows and if possible move to the basement. Do not let anyone into your home or business. Call 911 if there is someone on your property who you do not know. Monitor local and social media for additional information. Take shelter. Now it is 12:20 AM and the Lakewood Police Department has issued a shelter-in-place order for 1710 Rod St., Building 14.”

We do not live in Lakewood. There is no Rod Street – anywhere in the United States. There was no police activity anyone needed to know about. This message, laden as it is with fear triggers, had to be some kind of test, a psyop. Coming as it did at 1:20 in the morning, it was probably designed to catch people groggy and in a suggestible state. It was meant to put us in a state of fear.

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Movie (seen by no one) draws rave reviews

 
This YouTube link to the movie trailer refuses to embed. It will take you to a two-minute+ video.
 
The trailer above is to a movie called “To The End,” a documentary featuring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, activist Varshini Prakash, climate policy writer Rhiana Gunn-Wright, and political strategist Alexandra Rojas. The movie opened in 120 theaters, and in the period of Friday, December 9 through Sunday, December 11, pulled in $9,667.
 
That means that the movie is doing crickets, showing four or five times daily to empty theaters. Typical of climate change lunacy, all of the action is in the clouds. We folks down here on the ground are barely aware of anything actually being wrong.

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A justification for wilderness

Years ago when I lived in Billings, MT, some friends and I would walk an eight-mile stretch of the Yellowstone River. This was our part of Audubon’s annual Christmas bird count. The trains ran the same route, and parts of it were so narrow that if a train came through while we were there, we would scatter and hunker up against a rock embankment with our faces buried. Trains are dangerous, and can throw rocks and debris that could be deadly.

I remember thinking one time as I was hunkered down how powerful those trains are, and how our industrial society is served by them. “I am part of this,” I thought, that is, me and my demand on resources is part of the reason that train exists. 

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