https://shipwreckedcrew.substack.com/p/the-fbi-declares-traditional-catholics

I won’t try to summarize; readers here are probably familiar with the quality of his work, and the topic is important, so jump on board and read the whole thing.

I will add this, as an explanation of what he’s been doing for some time now that’s kept him from posting on Hot Air or elsewhere.

Why Subscribe To This Page?

I’m now using this page as a fundraising tool in support of the January 6 defendants that I represent. As I’ve said in many places, only a very small number of my clients have been able to pay any significant amount of money towards the costs of their defense. I have a low-overhead operation so the infrastructure costs aren’t that substantial. But I do need to keep the lights on and the dog fed. Online fundraising through GiveSendGo has kept me going up to this point, but subscription revenue from this site page will be a little more steady on a month-to-month basis. So, if you enjoy reading about the topics that are in my “wheelhouse” and you want to support my legal work at the same time, a subscription to this page accomplishes both. The link below is to the January 6 Legal Defense Fund — all contributions go to the fees and costs associated with my January 6 clients.

https://www.givesendgo.com/j6ldff

Subscription fees at Substack will help cover the basic operating expenses at his legal office.

**“If you can keep your head when all about you. Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too…”

More commentary from Ed Morrissey; a short overview of Winton’s post with the most important excerpts.
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2023/02/24/former-reuters-science-reporter-the-media-is-lying-about-co2-and-a-climate-crisis-n532936

Even so, CCN isn’t a regulatory body, and it has no real authority or constituency among activists. Why have these media outlets decided to abandon proper journalistic practice and principles to instead use stealth methods to make claims unsupported by data and science? Winton believes that the industry has deliberately advanced climate hysteria to generate a sense of emergency that will allow the Left to gain what it could not get through reasoned argument and debate:
…
This corruption of news reporting into narrative journalism has been apparent for years to climate-hysteria skeptics. Until recently, however, that revolution-by-evolution process hadn’t become apparent to most of the rest of the populace. Now, however, with all sorts of new data coming out about masks and natural immunity in the COVID pandemic, many more people have seen The Science® exposed as based entirely on political agenda. The mainstream-media refusal to cover new and conclusive meta-analyses of scientific studies that refute their three-year narratives in support of government emergency rule now demonstrates that corruption on a much broader scale.

Expect to see a lot more skepticism on the Sky Is Falling narrative — and especially directed at those who keep trying to serve it up, either as entrées or side dishes.

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/02/23/when-i-covered-climate-change-for-reuters-i-thought-co2-was-to-blame-for-rising-temperatures-i-was-wrong/

The BBC and the mainstream media regularly frighten everyone with the latest climate disaster news with pictures of floods, fires and hurricanes, always followed by scary predictions that things will only get worse unless mankind mends its irresponsible ways.

My alma mater Reuters, the global news agency, used to be above all this hysteria and would relentlessly apply its traditional standards of fairness and balance, but even this mainstream outfit seems to have sold out to the hysterics and axe grinders.

…

Every scientist knows the world’s climate has been gradually and occasionally irregularly warming since the last Ice Age over about 10,000 years. Nobody denies the climate is changing. The ‘denier’ charge is nonsensical. But it performs the useful function of making clear the user knows nothing about climate science. The argument is about the ‘why’ not the ‘if’. Warmists say all the warming is because of man’s activity. The rest say some, a little or none.
…
If you wonder why much of the mainstream media seem united in accepting that the world will soon die unless humans don hair shirts, freeze in winter and walk instead of driving, you need to know about websites like Covering Climate Now (CCN).

Reuters and some of the biggest names in the news like Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, CBS News, and ABC News have signed up to support CCN, which brags that it is an unbiased seeker after the truth. But this claim won’t last long if you peer behind the façade. CCN may claim to be fair and balanced, but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.

CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense. This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.
…
The idea of a ‘climate crisis’ is not widely accepted, but partisans shout about it. It is a very vague claim and hard to define or prove. By Reuters standards shouldn’t this include a balancing view? Certainly, many people believe that there is such a crisis, but lots of people don’t. The idea climate change threatens the health, safety and economic well-being of people worldwide is an assertion, not a fact.

The involvement of Reuters in CCN seems to me to be in direct contradiction to three of its 10 Hallmarks of Reuters Journalism – Hold Accuracy Sacrosanct, Seek Fair Comment, Strive For Balance and Freedom From Bias.
….
When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways. Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong.

My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.

My reporting reflected the wide range of views, with Reuters typical “on the one hand this, on the other, that” style. But even then, the mainstream media seem to have run out of the energy required, and often lazily went along with the BBC’s faulty, opinionated thesis. It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.

Fast forward 20 years and firm proof CO2 was warming the climate still hasn’t been established, but politics has taken over. Sure, there are plenty of computer models with their hidden assumptions ‘proving’ man is guilty as charged, and the assumption that we had the power and knowledge to change the climate became embedded.

The Left had lost all of the economic arguments by the 1990s, and its activists eagerly grabbed the chance to say free markets and small government couldn’t save us from climate change; only government intervention could do that. Letting capitalism run free was a certain way to ensure the end of the planet; smart Lefties should take charge and save us from ourselves.

The debate about climate change is far from over. I’m not a scientist so I don’t know enough to say it’s all man-made or not. But politicians and lobbyists have decided that we are all guilty. They are in the process of dismantling our way of life, ordering us to comply because it’s all for the future and our children. If we are going to give up our civilization, at the very least we ought to have an open debate. Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is that requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom.

Reuters should be leading this movement. All it has to do is stand by its 10 Hallmarks. And maybe tell CCN thanks but no thanks; it needs to apply Reuters principles to its climate reporting.

I like the Superhero Universe version.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqtzL4qXsAA_qgT?format=jpg&name=medium

https://nypost.com/2023/03/07/how-team-biden-is-getting-more-and-more-corporations-to-do-its-bidding/
Glenn Reynolds

But if you had any doubt these organizations are basically doing the Biden administration’s bidding, look at what happened when Congress tried to block 401(k) accounts from being run according to ESG guidelines: a Biden veto promise.

People rely on 401(k) funds for their retirement savings. If managers can run those funds with goals other than maximizing customers’ returns, it’s basically a tax on retirees to fund the managers’ social goals.

The Labor Department ruled this is kosher, and now that Congress wants to put an end to it — with legislation that passed both the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate — the Biden administration is making sure the rule stays in place anyway.

Team Biden would have to raise taxes to tax people for these purposes itself, which would cost votes. By deputizing fund managers to do this, it avoids responsibility.

On the video: philosophy seems to have bumped up against the same issues as religion. As we learned more about biology, evolution, genetics, proteins, hormones, etc., we need to ask what portions of our mental actions or activities are determined by genetics and pure physiology (basically as inherent reactions); and what elements/ fraction are determined or derived from culture? Sex at birth is determined by the X vs Y complement of our chromosomes, while we dress babies in pink or blue outfits based on culture.
We have tendencies to be social, cooperative with our in-group, exhibit a sense of “fairness”, etc., but we conduct business via contracts, do the best we can to obtain “justice” via defined (experience based) legal principles and practices, etc.

Sorting out which is which is not receiving as much attention as it might, although I understand that Daniel Dennett incorporates ideas about evolutionary into his philosophical musings.

And if Republicans oppose it, they are idiots. Who is financially enabling and socially promoting almost ALL of the toxic elements in U.S. society? Rich people. — MBunge

You are not entirely wrong, but … The history is long and clear that these things don’t work the way people think they do.

Within a several years of implementing the fed. income tax, the top rate hit 77% and hit 94% in 1944. People who have looked at the tax records for those years claim that exceedingly few people actually paid it. Because the most wealthy either have political connections (with exclusions built into the legislation) or can find dodges to skirt the tax. Those moderately well off people who don’t have either of those get stuck with the tax.

My wife used to do volunteer work with a small group of nice people, and during the Obama years one of them talked about a hard working friend who had opened a retail store that was beginning to do really well. “He made over $350K last year,” this person boasted. My wife piped up, “Oh, so he’s going to pay Obama’s wealthy tax then.”

“What?? No. My friend isn’t one of those wealthy people.”

“Over $250K is the starting point,” she replied.