Climate changers shocked and puzzled by snow in January By Ethel C. Fenig

So, how are the settled science climate changers, global warmers, global coolers going to explain last weekend’s “snowmageddon” “snowcalypse” (not my words), where several more inches than normal of the white stuff temporarily buried a large section of the eastern United States? But…but…snow in January, snow in winter wasn’t supposed to happen anymore, according to the Great Minds of Science who have built a nice money-making racket on denying reality.

For instance, take Nobel Peace Prize winner (read, and try not to laugh, his climate change acceptance speech here and old male white Oscar winner (listen to his acceptance speech here and Grammy winner and former vice president and president wannabe Al Gore (D)’s past definitive climate warning gurgles. Please!

Speaking to an audience in Germany five years ago, Gore — sometimes ridiculed as “The Goracle” — alleged that “the entire North Polarized [sic] cap will disappear in five years.” “Five years,” Gore said again, in case anybody missed it the first time, is “the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear.”

The following year, Gore made similar claims at a UN “climate” summit in Copenhagen. “Some of the models … suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore claimed in 2009. “We will find out.”

The Patience of the Jihadists By Eileen F. Toplansky

The ongoing interpretations concerning natural-born citizenship may eventually become a moot point. With the burgeoning immigration of groups of people who have little to no devotion to American ideals but who will have children born on American soil, one can easily envision that, in the not so distant-future, an American-born individual schooled in the hatred of jihad could conceivably occupy the White House.

Already the radical Muslim Brotherhood has “built the framework for a political party in America that seeks to turn Muslims into an Islamist voting bloc.” The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) aims to elect Islamists in Washington in order to institute sharia law and dismantle the American Constitution.

The Center for Security Policy’s Star Spangled Shariah: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party is part of its Civilization Jihad Reader Series (Volume 5). The Center asserts:

[T]he Muslim Brotherhood has been actively infiltrating American government and society since shortly after the Second World War. But March 2014 marked a significant step forward for the Brotherhood in America. Some of its key leadership figures joined together to establish the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the first political activist group in this country to be openly associated with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood. Formation of the USCMO was announced … [in] March 2014, just blocks from the U.S. Capitol Building. At the podium were: Ousama Jammal, Secretary General USCMO and past President of The Mosque Foundation; Naeem Baig, President, Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA); Nihad Awad, National Executive Director, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Mazen Mokhtar, Executive Director, Muslim American Society (MAS); Imam Mahdi Bray, National Director, American Muslim Alliance (AMA)[.] The significance of this move is best understood in the context of what the Muslim Brotherhood itself calls ‘civilizational jihad,’ a term used in its 1991 strategic plan: An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America. As the Explanatory Memorandum states, the Brotherhood’s mission in America is ‘destroying Western civilization from within,’ preparing the way for its replacement by the rule of Islam’s supremacist code, shariah (Islamic law). Unlike more immediately violent Brotherhood off-shoots – for example, al-Qa’eda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic State or HAMAS, the Brotherhood in the West has generally taken care to operate stealthily, under the radar, even to the point of sometimes denying its very presence in the United States.

What Ted Cruz Values The Texan is repelling millions who believe in an America of the future, not the past. By Bret Stephens

Rancho Mirage, Calif.

It’s 70 degrees in this desert oasis, where I’m attending a writers’ festival, and I’m looking up at a vista of snowcapped peaks, cerulean skies and pink clouds that looks like a Bob Ross painting, only happier. But there’s only so much California positivity a man can handle, especially when he doesn’t play golf. That snowbound den of depravity known as Manhattan is calling me home.

With apologies to Billy Joel, I’m in a New York values state of mind.

Maybe I’d be a better person if I got away from the coasts more often, or visited a gun range. Maybe my conservative principles would be less attenuated if I weren’t surrounded, as Ted Cruz put it the other day, by people who “are socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage,” and “focus around money and the media.” Maybe I should start listening to country music, the way Mr. Cruz did after he decided, in good Soviet fashion, that his musical taste ought to be dictated by political considerations.

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz at a campaign stop Jan. 19 in Freedom, N.H. Photo: John Minchillo/Associated Press

And maybe I wouldn’t be quite so nauseated by the junior senator from Texas if the cynicism with which he mounted his attack last week on “New York values” weren’t so wholly matched by the sinister taint of an ambitious sophist who takes his audience for fools. Ted Cruz is the guy who made Donald Trump look tolerant and statesmanlike. That’s saying something.

Already it has been widely mentioned that Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, is a senior executive with Goldman Sachs, which isn’t exactly an Iowa values kind of institution, and that Mr. Cruz’s 2012 run for Senate was financed with the help of $1 million in low-interest loans from Goldman. Also noted is that Mr. Cruz owes his political career to the backing of billionaire Peter Thiel, who is libertarian, gay, and perhaps wondering what he was thinking.

And it goes without saying that most of us would prefer the values of the lowliest New York Fire Department cadet over the cleverest Harvard Law graduate any day we need to get out of trouble that isn’t of our own making.

Second Only to the Rothschilds Speyer banks funded the London underground, placed the first Union Civil War bonds in Europe and built the Madeira-Mamore railroad.By Charles R. Morris

Before World War I, Edgar Speyer headed the London branch of the German-based Speyer banking conglomerate. Among other things, he was a great lover of music. His mansion on Grosvenor Square was a cynosure for composers— Debussy, Elgar, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg—all of whom availed themselves of the luxuries of the house, playing or conducting their work in private performances. “We live even more elegantly than kings and emperors,” Grieg wrote, referring to the mansion’s suite of rooms for visitors.

Not all of Edgar Speyer’s interests were so ethereal. The British Speyer branch was a key source of railroad finance, and Edgar himself was best known for creating—in partnership with Charles Yerkes, a Chicago entrepreneur—the London tube system, with its innovative “deep-tube” design. Edgar persisted in expanding the system despite its precarious finances and for many years functioned as its chief executive.

Although Edgar Speyer was a baronet and a member of the king’s Privy Council, he would become a target of the McCarthy-style attacks that were directed at Germans in England during World War I. The attacks grew to such an intensity—Speyer was accused of signaling to German submarines—that he resigned his official positions, over the protests of the king and prime minister. He soon liquidated the British branch of the firm and joined his elder brother, James, in New York. James was then running the Speyers’ branch in America, but it too would succumb before the next war broke out. It is this arc of centuries-long success and sudden diminishment that George W. Liebmann describes in “The Fall of the House of Speyer,” a solid work of financial and social history. They don’t make bankers like this anymore.

Islamic State Said to Have ‘Industry of Fake Passports’ French Minister Bernard Cazeneuve urges Europe to create task forces to help identify bogus papers By Valentina Pop

AMSTERDAM—Islamic State has created an industry from passports seized in Iraq, Syria and Libya, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday.

At a meeting of interior ministers in Amsterdam, Mr. Cazeneuve made the case for setting up special task forces to be sent to Greece to assist the identification of fake or stolen passports.

“Daesh has managed to seize passports in Iraq, Syria and Libya and to set up a true industry of fake passports,” Mr. Cazeneuve said in a news conference after the meeting, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

He made the case for establishing this task force and for authorities in the European Union to upload any relevant information to the counterterrorism databases in the bloc.

At least two of the terrorists in the Paris attacks in November traveled on the migrant route through Greece using Syrian passports and posing as refugees, as over one million people arrived on the continent last year, mostly via Greece.

Iran President Visits Europe to Seal Post-Sanctions Deals Worth Billions French car maker Peugeot expected to sign one of a host of deals likely to be announcedBy Stacy Meichtry in Paris and Robert Wall

European companies are promising billions in new deals in Iran—€5.7 billion from Italian steelmaker Danieli and more than €300 million from French car builder PSA Peugeot Citroën, among others—as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani works to revive trade and political ties on the Continent this week.
Mr. Rouhani landed in Rome on Monday on his first overseas trip since the European Union lifted sanctions on Jan. 16 in return for Tehran’s implementation of key restrictions on its nuclear program.

The trip will take Mr. Rouhani from Vatican City—marking the first meeting between an Iranian president and a pope since 1999—to the gilded halls of Paris’s Élysée Palace.

With a number of U.S. sanctions still in place, European countries are moving quickly to re-establish ties to sell everything from consumer goods to aircraft.

Italian and Iranian companies signed deals valued at about €17 billion ($18.36 billion) late Monday ahead of a formal dinner between Mr. Rouhani and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Earlier in the day, Italian steel firm Danieli said it would sign deals valued at about €5.7 billion during the visit. Other firms signing agreements on Monday included oil-field services company Saipem SpA, energy group Ansaldo Energia and ship maker Fincantieri SpA, but further details weren’t available.

SAUDI MAN FACES 1,000 LASHES FOR HAVING SEX WITH VACUUM CLEANER BY BOB FLANAGAN !!!????

thanks to e-pal Bruce P……rsk
Riyadh | Saudi police officers in the district of Al-Mansuriyya in the branch municipality of Al-Shifa have arrested a man accused of having sex with his vacuum cleaner, reports the Riyadh Daily.

The man was caught in full action by his wife of 17 years before she reported her husband to authorities.

“After 17 years of loyalty, this is how this miscreant treats me,” she told local reporters. “I feel used, I feel dirty,” she added.

The suspect has denied any wrong doing and blames his wife for inventing the whole affair of which he could face 2 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for adultery

As adultery is a crime punishable by death in Islamic law, usually performed by stoning the person to death, experts believe the man’s condemnation is a light one.

MY SAY-BLIZZARDS AND MAYORS

When our putative entry into presidential politics Bloomberg was the mayor of New York, he actually had to apologize for the terrible response to the blizzard of 2010. His reputation is built on competence? While major thoroughfares seemed at least passable, especially in Manhattan, streets across vast stretches of the city remained untouched, leaving tens of thousands of residents unable to get to jobs and many facing long waits for ambulances and other emergency services.

New York Struggles as Blizzard’s Impact Chastens Bloomberg

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/nyregion/29weather.html?_r=0

Mayor Bloomberg apologizes for snow screw-ups during blizzard of 2010, defends sanitation department….while Manhattan, where the mayor resides, was efficiently cleaned up, the other boroughs were a disgrace. “After being buried under an avalanche of complaints from constituents, political critics and even allies, Hizzoner finally admitted the storm was not well-handled.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mayor-bloomberg-apologizes-snow-screw-ups-blizzard-2010-defends-sanitation-department-article-1.469561

Daniel Johnson: How to Resist the End of Europe Are we Europeans doomed to suffer the loss of our inexhaustible cultural creativity, along with its source in Judeo-Christian tradition? The prospect must not be accepted.

I am deeply honored that my essay, “Does Have Europe Have a Future?,” elicited such substantial responses from four distinguished writers. All four have not only entered fair and useful comments on the essay but also contributed their own answers to the question posed in my title.

Peter Berkowitz and Wilfred McClay agree with me that the nation-state is not the source of Europe’s ills. And I agree with Berkowitz, following Alexis de Tocqueville, that European nations need to recover their tradition of freedom, just as I agree with McClay that such liberty must be limited by law, human or divine. It is refreshing to hear Americans encouraging Europeans to take pride in their patriotism and their national identities; in this respect, McClay rightly contrasts the grand traditions of European civilization, which gave birth to the United States and to so much else, with a European Union that is anything but united.

On this point, I part company with Claire Berlinski even as I’m grateful for her superb tour d’horizon and the weight she properly gives to the threat posed to Europe by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. To her, the only answer to the external threats menacing Europe is a single foreign and defense policy, which means strengthening and indeed uniting the European Union. I beg to differ: however much some European leaders may dream otherwise, the EU is not a military alliance. Nor do I recognize her description of German, French, and other EU military officers “eager” to “unleash” their forces against Europe’s enemies. That was not the case even during the cold war, much less now.

The only effective alliance we have is NATO, which implies an acceptance of U.S. leadership that the French still find unpalatable. France is indeed adept at launching policing operations in its former African colonies, but it is no more eager to support U.S. military operations in the Muslim world now than in 2003, when it refused to join the coalition against Saddam Hussein, or in 1986 when it denied President Reagan permission for American bombers to fly over France en route to Qaddafi’s Libya. True, the French are now bombing Islamic State (ISIS) forces in Syria and Iraq, but that is because ISIS poses a direct threat to France itself.

The Death of America? by Paul R. Hollrah

In more than twelve years of writing a weekly essay on some of the most critical problems of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I’ve never been short of subject matter and I’ve never been at a loss for words… until now. For more than two months I have tried to find a way to address the question of what must be done to prosecute the war on radical Islam, while being fully aware that a committed communist, who may also be a “closet” Muslim jihadist, serves as commander in chief of U.S. military forces. Although I have never hesitated to go “out on a limb” to propose solutions that others may see as radical or “outside the box,” I have attempted to stay as close as possible to what I hope others would judge to be at least within the realm of possibility.

Having said that, and being aware that essentially everyone else in the western world remains wedded to the notion that the long term future of western civilization depends on our ability to find a way to peacefully coexist with Islamists… both radicals and moderates… I find myself of a different opinion. In order to be persuaded otherwise, I would have to see conclusive proof that somewhere… at some time in history… Muslims have set aside their goal of total world dominion in the interest of harmony and peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims. That proof simply does not exist. Instead, the so-called “moderate” Muslims appear to be nothing but a silent cheering section for radical jihadists.

Reading the history of Islam, it is tempting to believe that, for periods of years since the death of Mohammed in 632 A.D., Muslims throughout the world had finally decided to live as civilized human beings when, in fact, they were merely resting, re-arming, and preparing for the next major assault on Christianity, Judaism, and the rest of western culture.
According to an April 13, 2015, report by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), during calendar year 2011, for the third year in a row, Sunni Muslims accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities. Of the more than 5,700 terror incidents during that year, some 56 percent were committed by Sunnis. As such, they were responsible for 12,533 fatalities, or 70 percent of all terrorist fatalities.