Hu is on first.

The Climate Change scam

‘On a domestic scale, one would think that slow economic growth, persistently high unemployment and historic low levels of labor participation, the failure of our public school systems (outside of the richest suburbs), and the imminent implosion of our health insurance and health care systems would be higher policy priorities than the Quixotic and fundamentally egomaniacal quest for humans to change (or stop changing) the climate of our planet.”

Unless, of course, you needed something to hide your policy failures.

http://spectator.org/articles/57355/our-political-climate

Conservative sources

Rush Limbaugh,
Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes,
Glenn Reynolds,
Dick Morris,
Ed Driscoll,
Richard Fernandez,
Andrew Bostom,
Caroline Glick,
Andrew Bolt,
Pamela Geller,
Tim Blair,
Phyllis Chesler,
Robert Spencer,
Melanie Phillips,
Michelle Malkin,
Victor Davis Hanson, The Blaze,
National Review and
FOX News.

Snow plow in Lucas County, Ohio

Stay home, Tuesday, January 7.

Adoptees born in Ohio are finally adults

If you were adopted in Ohio between January 1964 and September 1996 you were part of a special class of citizens denied your birth records, even if living in another state--unless you could prove you were an American Indian or you had connections to someone in vital statistics who could do the search for you. Governor Kasich signed Senate Bill 23 in December. Imagine being 50 years old (1964) and your state deciding you were still an adopted baby, unable to know the truth about your fake birth certificate. I believe Ohio Right to Life was very, very wrong to fight this for 40 years even as they fight for the right to live of the unborn.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/12/20/with-law-all-adoptees-get-access-to-records.html

Academic race and gender studies

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304858104579264321265378790

http://www.city-journal.org/2011/cjc0714hm.html

http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_2_multiculti-university.html

Obama beats a dead horse named “The Gap.”

Obama, having embarrassed his administration with the tax increases and loss of insurance for millions, will once again bang the drum of income inequality to drown out the complaints, aka "the gap." But the gap for the majority who are not celebrities or wealthy millionaire politicians is caused by marriage, or the lack of it. To even it up will he tax married people more--oh wait, that is already the case, including higher prices for Obamacare than if they were single.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/two-classes-in-america-divided-by-i-do.html

Class envy, lies, distorted statistics, fuel for anger, wagging finger--all after a very expensive holiday.  Really, it's discouraging how many Americans are blind to his methods. He can help close the gap by getting government out of the way, reducing regulations, lowering taxes, but he's done just the opposite. The stock market had an unbelievably good year—he parties with celebrity millionaires and billionaires and still gripes about the rich who finance his campaigns. Also, the country did very well under sequestration and the shut down. Economy actually improved.

Upping the minimum wage so it is more expensive for the middle class to eat at a fast food restaurant and extending unemployment benefits haven’t done anything for the low income in the past—in fact those programs worsen the situation.  And it certainly won’t close the gap between my income and the President’s.

Happy now?

In Columbus it has warmed up to minus 4.  That’s not the chill factor—it’s somewhere in the mid 20s.

No coffee date this morning

Usually I meet my friend Adrienne for coffee on Tuesday morning.  We’ve called it off for today, and yesterday’s book club meeting has been moved to next Monday.

This is channel 6, about an hour ago.

Happy 69th anniversary to the Bushes

She said she married the first man she kissed.

They set the record in 2000 when they surpassed John and Abigail Adams’ 54-year union—now they’ve extended that.

http://youngcons.com/the-longest-presidential-marriage-in-us-history-celebrates-their-69th-anniversary/

The romance began when the two met during a Christmas dance at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., back when the future president was 16 years old. The two were engaged a year and a half later, right before President Bush shipped out overseas to fight in World War II as a naval pilot.

A few years later, in Sept. 1944, Bush was shot down and nearly killed during a mission over the Pacific, which resulted in his being sent back home in time for Christmas. Soon after, Bush and the then Barbara Pierce were married in Rye, N.Y. on Jan. 6, 1945. They would have six children, including future President George W. Bush.

Now that the 2 weeks vacation is over. . .

Calories at fast food restaurants

I love the You Pick 2 at Panera's, and if counting calories, it could be the better choice. The You Pick Two Broccoli Cheddar Soup and Chicken Caesar Salad add up to only 420 calories. A single Sierra Turkey Sandwich has a jaw-dropping 920 calories. (from a quiz on fast food calories at Dr. Oz) On politics I score 94%; on fast food calories, only 33%. I guess I need to eat out more.

Claire Berlinski on Sweden

Hysterical. The author of There is no alternative; Why Margaret Thatcher matters (2008 Basic Books) explains why socialists will bring up Sweden when justifying socialism:

“In his view [Neil Kinnock who disliked Thatcher], and he is perfectly clear about this, the alternative to Thatcher was a planned economy.

And the evidence he offers that such an economy can create anything other than a human hell is Sweden.  Let me finish the sentence he wouldn’t let me finish [in her interview with him, p. 151-53].  Socialists love analogies to Sweden.  But they are always unconvincing because they are based on some fantasy Sweden, rather than on an actual Nordic country bordered by Norway and Finland.  In this Sweden of lore, every single woman is also eighteen years old, blonde, busty, lonely, naked, and waiting for you in the sauna.  Kinnock is simply mistaken about Swedish unemployment statistics.  In the early 1990s, Swedish unemployment rose to 13 %, higher than ever experienced in Britain after Thatcher came to power.  In the period Kinnock is discussing, Sweden in fact experienced a precipitous slide in the prosperity league—from fourth place in 1970 to sixteenth place in 1998.  In fact the policies Kinnock admires nearly ran Sweden into the ground.  Only when they were abandoned did the Swedish economy begin to recover.  You may as well argue that the command economy has been a splendid success in Narnia.”

Berlinski agrees with her critics that she didn’t plan for Britain’s economic transition—precisely because if the government plans the economy, it is no longer free, and if it isn’t free, the transitions are likely to be in the bread lines.

Cats stealing dog beds

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/13/jerk-cats-love-stealing-dog-beds_n_4093467.html

and trying to fit in boxes, jars, vases

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/22/if-it-fits-i-sits-supercut_n_3790622.html

Claire Berlinski on free markets

The author of Why Margaret Thatcher matters (2008 Basic Books) attempts to first explain free markets, in explaining why Margaret Thatcher was so passionate about them as a key to a moral society:

“The argument for free markets involves a beautiful, fascinating, counterintuitive theory.  It is one of the great achievements in human thought.  It is also, basically, simple.  A free market is one in which the prices of goods and services are determined by individual sellers and buyers, not by the government.  It differs from a planned or command economy in that no centralized authority makes decisions about resource allocation.” p. 118

Then she goes on to explain how selling a product at gun point or deliberately not fulfilling the order on January 1 that you promised is not healthy free markets and government is needed to ensure that won’t happen. (p. 122)  Since she probably wrote this part in 2006 or 2007 she had no way to know she was predicting exactly what has happened during the Obama reign with the ACA.

Employer based health insurance  (60% of workers, 90% of market) which grew up after WWII was originally a choice by employer and employee which then developed to a jumble of government law and regulation.  The biggest plum for manipulation by Washington was exemption from income tax on that benefit.  If the government had bowed out and let the system evolve, perhaps we wouldn’t have had the messy government built system as a foundation for another failed system—Obamacare.  PPACA was signed into law on March 23, 2010 and the President has been violating it ever since.

Grammar fails

http://www.bitrebels.com/lifestyle/grammar-mistakes-on-signs/

Cold snap throughout the mid-west and south

Planned Parenthood fails poor women--again

Abby Johnson, a former PP employee, writes:  Abortion supporters complain that we prolifers have caused poor women to lose their access to healthcare...all because so many Planned Parenthood clinics are closing.

But here's the truth. Planned Parenthood CHOSE to close their doors...no one forced them. In Texas, all they had to do was stop performing abortions and they would have been eligible for all of that state money that was taken away from them. But they didn't. They CHOSE to close their doors and abandon all of those women who went to them for services other than abortion.

And since abortion is "only 3% of their business" it really shouldn't have been THAT big of a deal for them to get rid of the abortion services and stay open, right? (We all know the 3% number is a lie).

Hear this loud and clear. PLANNED PARENTHOOD HAS FAILED WOMEN. THEY EXERCISED THEIR RIGHT TO CHOOSE AND CHOSE TO STOP HELPING WOMEN.

Are you smarter than the average politician?

The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%.  Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office.  I scored 93.94%.  Try it.

http://www.isi.org/quiz.aspx?q=FE5C3B47-9675-41E0-9CF3-072BB31E2692

Wasn’t al-Qaeda defeated? Another Obama mistake.

“Over the past several days, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, has taken control of large sections of two western Iraqi cities that were once bastions for the terror group.”

http://counterjihadreport.com/2014/01/03/al-qaeda-seizes-partial-control-of-2-cities-in-western-iraq/

Officials from the Iraqi Interior Ministry acknowledged that parts of Fallujah and Ramadi are under al Qaeda control.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/01/al_qaeda_seizes_cont.php

Top Republican senators on Saturday blamed the Obama administration for Al Qaeda-affiliates purportedly over-running parts of Iraq, including the city of Fallujah that the United States secured before President Obama removed all U.S. forces from that country in 2011. . .

“The administration's narrative that Iraq's political leadership objected to U.S. forces remaining in Iraq after 2011 is patently false,” said McCain and Graham, military hawks with an active interest in Middle East affairs. “We know firsthand that Iraq's main political blocs were supportive and that the administration rejected sound military advice and squandered the opportunity to conclude a security agreement with Iraq."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/04/mccain-graham-blame-obama-for-al-qaeda-related-takeover-fallujah-call-situation/