RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/blog/cooling-kills-governments-must-shift-to-cold-preparation/?print=1

In the past few years we have seen a dramatic demonstration of the deadly effects of prolonged cold weather. From Chicago to China, Egypt to Argentina, India to the Antarctic, new low temperature and snowfall records have been set.

This has led to severe hardship for millions — and increased death rates.

The first half of this year’s Northern Hemisphere (NH) winter season was especially brutal. December 2013 and January 2014 were the third-coldest Decembers and Januaries in the past 30 years averaged over the contiguous 48 United States, with temperatures plummeting to −10°C in Atlanta and −26°C in Chicago. Residents of North East India struggled with unusually severe snow and −10°C temperatures without home heating. Snow and extreme cold also impacted the Kashmir Valley in India, where many elderly and very young people died of hypothermia. At the time of this writing, most of India is two to five degrees C colder than usual, a serious problem when 95% of all Indian homes lack central heating.

In mid-December, Cairo experienced its first snowfall in over a century [1], and Jerusalem was hit by a snowstorm called the “fiercest in 20 years.” On December 17, 59% of the contiguous United States was snow-covered, a level the National Weather Service claims has not been seen on that date in at least a decade.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-Fray-Liberman-on-unity-How-betrayed-do-YOU-feel-341429 Recent remarks by FM Liberman reflect the political Right’s tacit deference to views of the political Left and implied acknowledgment of its moral superiority. When there is a dispute between the unity of the nation or the unity of the land, the nation’s unity is more important… I’m willing to give up territory in […]

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2768/The-Hillary-Papers-And-the-Headline-Is.aspx This week, The Washington Free Beacon published a story by Alana Goodman based on excerpts from the papers of Deeda Blair, an intimate friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton, under the headine, “The Hillary Papers: Archive of Closest Friend Paints Portrait of Ruthless First Lady.” Media filters — censors — went haywire  attempting to downplay and dismiss the […]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/james-delingpole/9136061/the-martyrdom-of-mark-steyn/

I envied him for getting sued by Michael Mann. But now he needs all the support we can give

When I first read, many months ago, that the notorious US climate scientist Michael Mann was suing the notorious right-wing bastard Mark Steyn for defamation, I admit that I felt a little piqued.

Obviously a libel trial is not something any sane person would wish to court; and naturally I’m a massive fan of Steyn’s. Nevertheless, after all the work I’ve dedicated over the years to goading Mann, I found it a bit bloody annoying that Steyn — a relative latecomer to the climate change debate — should have been the one who ended up stealing all my courtroom glory.

What made me doubly jealous was that this was a case Steyn was guaranteed to win. In the unlikely event it came to court — which I didn’t think it would, given Mann’s longstanding aversion to any form of public disclosure regarding his academic research — the case would fall down on the fact that defamation is so hard to prove in the US, especially when it involves publicly funded semi-celebrities who are expected to take this sort of thing on the chin.

Since then, though, much has changed. It now looks — go to Steynonline.com for the full story — as if Steyn is going to be up there on his own, fighting and financing his case without the support of his magazine, National Review; that the outcome is not as certain as it seemed at the beginning; and that this hero deserves all the help we can give him.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ BOYCOTT ISRAEL, NOT IRAN If the left’s foreign policy these days had a slogan, it would be, “Boycott Israel, not Iran.” The double standard, dishonest as it is ugly, is also the motto of Obama’s foreign policy, which benevolently blesses Iran’s nuclear program with one outstretched hand in the name of peace and chokes […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/371181/print The school of literary criticism known as reception theory holds that a text should be studied in light of its effect on its contemporaries, that a reader should be aware of the “horizon of expectations” in which a text is produced. I was reminded of this the other day as I observed, in amusement, fascination, and […]

TAXING US FOR JUNK SCIENCE…IS PURE UNADULTERATED FRAUD!!!

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/371179/print

Costly federal weatherizing effort will really get this country back on its feet

President Obama’s proposed 2015 budget, to be released next month, will include a $1 billion Climate Resilience Fund meant to “help communities across the country become more resilient to the effects of climate change,” according to a White House press release.

The fund will be used to research both the impacts of climate change and how to prepare infrastructure and communities for climate change and will “fund breakthrough technologies and resilient infrastructure.”

In the same release, the White House said that it will spend $100 million in livestock disaster assistance for California farmers, $15 million on conservation projects, $5 million on watershed protection, and $60 million to support food banks in California “to help families that may be economically impacted by the drought.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371201/rand-pauls-frivolous-nsa-lawsuit-andrew-c-mccarthy

The claim that metadata collection runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment is specious.
By Andrew C. McCarthy

In what looks more like a publicity stunt than a serious legal challenge, Senator Rand Paul has filed a class-action lawsuit against President Obama and other top executive-branch officials, claiming that the National Security Agency’s metadata-collection program violates the Fourth Amendment.

The suit is no surprise. I’ve previously noted that, despite his “constitutional conservative” branding, Senator Paul can sound just like a “living Constitution” progressive when it suits him: He finds the data collection offensive, so ipso facto it must be not only unwise policy but a violation of fundamental law. I am surprised, though, to find former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli lending his name to the effort. Like Senator Paul, Mr. Cuccinelli is very sound on many things and was particularly strong in arguing the unconstitutionality of Obamacare. But he is all wet on this one.

Let’s get something straight from the start: It is true that the NSA’s program may be illegal. But that has nothing to do with the Constitution. It is a question of compliance with Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, the statute pursuant to which the data collection takes place.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-climate-change-makes-droughts-harsher-costlier/article/2544077?custom_click=rss&utm_campaign=Weekly+Standard+Story+Box&utm_source=weeklystandard.com&utm_medium=referral President Obama, during a tour of California’s drought-torn agricultural central valley, tied the state’s dry spell – one of the worst on recent record – to climate change and said extreme weather patterns are only going to get worse unless the country reduces its carbon emissions. “A change in climate means that weather-related disaster […]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/legalizing-forbidden-fruit_781612.html

Laborare est orare: Work is worship. Once upon a time that Latin cry arose from scores of medieval monasteries. Their monks believed that—as Carlyle later put it–“all true Work is Religion: and whatsoever Religion is not work may go and dwell among the Brahmins, Spinning Dervishes, or where it will…One monster there is in the world: the idle man.” Nor were those old monks the first to believe in the religious nature of work, the blasphemous nature of idleness. In Hebrew the word for labor (avodah) is also the word for prayer.

But when Douglas Elmendorf, chairman of the (nonpartisan) Congressional Budget Office, recently announced that one of the effects of the new health law will be to reduce, by 2017, the total number of hours Americans work by the equivalent of over two million full time jobs, President Obama’s spokesmen were quick to praise this massive “disincentive” to work as a blessing in disguise. Jason Furman, chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, declared that “this is people having new choices they didn’t used to have.” From the White House itself came the declaration that “individuals will [now] be empowered to make choices about their own lives and…have the opportunity to pursue their dreams.” Another Democratic Dr. Pangloss celebrated this new opportunity “to spend more time with your children.” So much for the brave and religious nature of work in the Era of Obama.

Such repudiations of ancient wisdom have by now become a hallmark of the Obama administration. Not long after Elmendorf’s announcement came the news of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to grant the brides and grooms of same-sex marriages the same legal rights in federal matters that couples married in the old-fashioned, “mixed” marriage mode have in, among other things, bankruptcy proceedings, legal testimony, and prison visits. Holder’s diligent researchers are now ransacking the archives to seek out every possibility for legally changing federal rules and regulations to accommodate those married according to the new dispensation without going to the trouble of getting Congress to pass new legislation.