by Arnold Ahlert:  In the progressive-dominated bicoastal fever swamps known as New York and California, hysterical leftists are once again in search of sympathetic courts who will abet their global warming agenda.

In New York City, Bill de Blasio’s administration has filed a federal suit against a number of fossil fuel companies based on their alleged role in precipitating climate change. According to the suit, “The city seeks to shift the costs of protecting the city from climate change impacts back onto the companies that have done nearly all they could to create this existential threat.”
          BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell are the defendants in this case, and the lawsuit alleges these companies have produced more than 11% of the entire world’s industry-based methane and carbon pollution — “since the dawn of the industrial revolution,” the suit adds.
          The plaintiffs further allege that Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York in 2012, killing 53 people statewide and costing more than $19 billion in damages, was precipitated by global warming and that these companies should not only pay for that damage, but the city’s future resiliency upgrades. In a further burst of fiscal insanity given New York city’s looming  pension disaster, de Blasio, along with pension fund board members Public Advocate Letitia James and Comptroller Scott Stringer, are calling on those funds to divest from fossil fuel companies over the next five years.
          A New York Post editorial takes this effort to task, calling the suit a “ridiculous assault on the fossil-fuel industry that powers our city and whose earnings support retired city workers.” It further illuminates the depths of de Blasio’s hypocrisy, noting that while he’s suing to recoup the costs of building up the city’s defenses in areas most prone to flooding during hurricanes, he is also “encouraging more residential development all along the city’s waterfront.”
          “Then, too, it would be nice to see the mayor practicing what he preaches,” the paper adds. “Will he ever stop taking his caravan of gas-guzzling SUVs to his Park Slope gym? How about canceling his flights around the country in support of his progressive agenda?”
          As it is with most “do as I say, not as I do” progressives, the answers are no and no.
          In California, the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach, along with San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Marin Counties, are attempting the same gambit, based on the same ideologically driven pseudo-science. Yet New Yorkers should take note: as Wall Street Journal columnist Andrew Scurria explains, Exxon is flipping the script on this political hackery, “highlighting past bond disclosures in which its government critics suggested they couldn’t predict whether and when sea levels would rise.” In fact, “The company filed court papers in Texas on Monday seeking to force government officials to answer questions under oath about those statements.”
          Columnist Katy Grimes illuminates the implications, writing, “These greedy municipal cheaters are now caught between two significant, self-imposed frauds: Either their lawsuits are fraudulent, or their bond offerings are.”
          Scurria cites San Francisco as an example of a city trying to have it both ways, noting that the lawsuit it filed spoke to “imminent risk of catastrophic storm surge flooding,” while a general obligation bond offering made last year stated the city “is unable to predict whether sea-level or rise or other impacts of climate change … will occur.”
          Santa Cruz County was equally hypocritical. In its lawsuit it insisted it has been experiencing more frequent and severe droughts, heat waves and wildfires, while facing a 98% chance of a “devastating three-foot flood — by 2050. Yet last year’s bond offering cited as risk factors "unpredictable climatic conditions, such as flood, droughts and destructive storms.”
          Exxon believes these contradictions constitute fraud. “Each of the municipalities warned that imminent sea level rise presented a substantial threat to its jurisdiction and laid blame for this purported injury at the feet of energy companies,” Exxon stated. “Notwithstanding their claims of imminent, allegedly near-certain harm, none of the municipalities disclosed to investors such risks in their respective bond offerings.”
          Nonetheless, these progressive fraudsters have their advocates. CNN columnist Jeffrey Sachs embraces the typically tiresome “evil corporation” stance, insisting these companies “have known for decades that their product is dangerous for the planet, but they relentlessly hid the evidence, stoking confusion rather than solutions,” he writes with regard to New York’s “bold” bid for “climate safety and justice.” “Through individual company efforts to support climate denialism and confusion, and through relentless and reckless lobbying by the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, the companies launched a full-blown assault on climate science to stop or delay the shift to renewable energy.”
          Sachs also insists fossil fuels are entirely unnecessary: “New York can go green and electric by mid-century through electric vehicles, electricity-powered public transit, and electric heat pumps for buildings, powered by electricity from wind, solar and hydroelectric power.”
          In a better world, these fossil fuel companies would call Sachs’ and his ecofascist allies’ bluff. Instead of abiding by New York City’s “road map” of reducing global warming emissions as much as 80% by 2050, or California’s 2006 legislation calling for the same reduction (a target one study concluded the state would “badly miss” only seven years later), perhaps these “climate destroyers” might voluntarily agree to stop selling their products in both places far earlier. Perhaps as early as five years from now, or sooner. After all, if global warming is as critical an issue as these leftist politicians make it out to be, it only seems right to combat it as quickly as possible. Make it incumbent on those same politicians, many of whom use “shakedown lawsuits against certain politically incorrect industries and businesses, designed to force acquiescence to leftist political policies” as Grimes puts it, to explain to the public why ruining a state’s economy in California, or undermining New York City’s pension funding, is a small price to pay for “settled science” that is anything but.
          One might hazard a guess that even the most progressive New Yorkers, already reeling from a subway system in a state of emergency, or their equally progressive Californian counterparts, facing the financial collapse of Gov. Jerry Brown’s beloved “bullet train,” might be less than enthused by the consequences of such zealotry, such as skyrocketing gas prices — while gas still remains available. They might even decide it’s time for the progressive political class to “walk the global warming walk” — literally — as opposed to riding around in large carbon-spewing vehicles, or living in energy-consuming residences far larger than those of their constituents.
          “The idea that oil companies might sue public servants personally in an attempt to intimidate them from protecting their communities and environment is abhorrent but consistent with their prior behavior,” San Mateo County counsel John Beiers said. “We will not be intimidated.”
          One suspects that the companies who still provide Americans with the overwhelming majority of their energy needs won’t be intimidated either.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53518

by Political Editors:  While much of the mainstream media has been questioning the status of President Donald Trump’s mental health, it appears that it is the senator from New Jersey whose mental stability could be called into question. During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) erupted in rage at Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, over Trump’s alleged “s—thole countries” comment.

          Pounding his fists, Booker yelled, “When scum-Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage when I heard about this experience in that meeting. And for you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues … when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now because they’re worried about what happened in the White House. That’s unacceptable to me.” Wow, hello snowflake-ville.
          First off, it is flat out ridiculous to suggest that millions of Americans are hurting because of Trump’s alleged words. While Trump’s alleged words were crass, his point is valid. And if Booker is indeed “hurting,” then he needs to visit a mental health professional, pronto.
          Secondly, and more significantly, where is the outrage from that party of outrage — those “women’s rights” feminists — over the fact that Booker, a man in a position of power, just publicly dressed down and belittled a woman? Where are the charges of sexism? Where are condemnations and demands for apologies from fellow 2020 presidential contenders Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren (D-MA) or Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)? Recall how mere months ago Democrats blasted Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for telling Warren to “sit down and shut up,” after she refused to end a speech after her allotted time had passed.
          The truth is Democrats are the party of Hollywood. They play on emotions rather than truth and principles.  ~The Patriot Post
          Watch the spectacle below:

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzH64iwMxpk
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53497

by Political Editors:  The two Republican senators from Arizona have evidently decided to tag team in their efforts to belittle President Donald Trump while playing for affection from the mainstream media. RINO-Jeff Flake delivered a blistering speech from the Senate floor Wednesday, eviscerating Trump for his rhetoric about the press. RINO-John McCain took to the pages of The Washington Post with his own condemnatory opinion piece making the same argument. While both make some fair criticisms of the president’s temperament, they’re also completely missing the point.

          Following the Democrat and MSM narrative, RINO-Flake and RINO-McCain worry that Trump is endangering the freedom of the press with his combative rhetoric and “fake news” awards. But Trump, who the Leftmedia regularly and repeatedly label as everything from a racist to mentally unstable, is clearly not the one responsible for “discrediting” the free press. Journalists have only themselves to blame for that.
          As for the senators’ idea that Trump is echoing Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, or providing justification for despots around the world to persecute journalists, we’d counter, as we did Tuesday, that it wasn’t Trump who ordered the Justice Department to go after journalists and their sources. That was Barack liar-nObama’s M.O. Where is RINO-Flake’s speech or RINO-McCain’s op-ed blasting liar-nObama for his real threat to a free press?
          Moreover, a news flash: This “fake news” phenomenon among tyrants has been around for a lot longer than Trump, as both senators well know. It used to go by the term “propaganda.” The truth is, if Trump had never uttered the phrase “fake news,” it would not change the long-running practice of totalitarian regimes suppressing journalistic freedom.
          Both senators should be ashamed of doing nothing more than ingratiating themselves to the Democrat/Media Complex. Yet they seem to view the MSM as having the authority to dictate how Americans are supposed to think on culture, politics and government. Theirs is not a plea for freedom or truthfulness, but rather a call for Trump to surrender to the dictates of the PC police. No wonder RINO-McCain lost in 2008 and RINO-Flake is headed for the exit this year.
          It would serve both senators well to ask why things like talk radio, Fox News and conservative websites like ours are so popular. It would do them some good to go around and talk to everyday working-class Americans and find out why they voted for a guy like Trump. Because, clearly, like most of the Beltway elites, these two still don’t get it. Americans simply got tired of being lied to and abused by Washington elites. They got tired of listening to mainstream news media outlets acting more often than not as cheerleaders for leftist social causes rather than defenders of Americans’ constitutional freedoms and rights. Americans got tired of hearing how they were the world’s biggest problem and that to be a proud American was wrong or immoral.
          And Trump, warts and all, gets one yuge thing right: He doesn’t hide his immense pride in and love for his country and countrymen. He really believes that America and Americans are the best. It doesn’t play well with the Left, the MSM and Washington elites, but it does with Americans all across this great nation.
          It’s not that we necessarily disagree with RINO-Flake or RINO-McCain that Trump’s sometimes reckless approach presents some problems, but it’s what they don’t say that is the most egregious error. It is the media’s collusion with the Democrat Party, not Trump’s rhetoric, that presents the greatest threat to Liberty.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53510