Short but sweet

AAA W in Africa

What’s New Today

Story #1 is a nice story about W.  #2 looks at the evolution of Barack Obama.  In my opinion there is no evolution there so much as a reveal from him on who he actually is.  #3 is an excellent story on how Americans are weak at math. 

Today’s Thoughts

The unemployment rate has been above 8% for 41 consecutive months. In the previous 60 years, the jobless topped 8% in a TOTAL of only 39 months.

I’m looking forward to a President Romney in the White House.   Finally we can have economic news from the MSM that doesn’t begin with the word “unexpectedly.”  

“We all want progress, but if you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”  C.S. Lewis

1.  Do you miss him yet?

I simply love the photo….

…Isn’t it a reminder both that there is more to life than politics and that politics exists to serve those greater things?

I recently ran into a cab driver (I know, I know, could I be any lazier a reporter?), an immigrant from Pakistan, who has been a citizen of the United States for 25 years. He confessed he hated George Bush when he was president, thought he lied to finish his father’s unfinished business and all of the rest of it. He hated him so much, he told me, that he even went to the library and got his book when it came out. And instead of the bitter feelings he expected reading to prompt to prompt, he found himself humbled: “I didn’t even take the time to know what he was doing as president.”

He cited, in particular, the PEPFAR support for Africans.

The cabbie still has some reservations about the Iraq war (both of them), but George W. Bush wound up helping him become a better informed citizen, and a more inquisitive one. And a little more aware of — and appreciative of — good people who step forward and the people they are stepping forward for…

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/304867/w-zambia-kathryn-jean-lopez

I doubt this will happen with O.  If he had done anything like this, his people would have spread the word far and wide through their media hacks. 

2.  The Evolution of Barack Obama

President Obama’s bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania late last week offered a striking look at the evolution of a president. In 2008, Obama used soaring rhetoric and personal biography to talk about binding together a red-blue nation. His message today is about the urgent need to defeat a stubborn opposition party in order to move the country forward.

Four years ago, Obama used themes of hope and change to suggest that he could bring a new politics to Washington. He was open to the idea that, as he sometimes put it, the solutions to the country’s problems were somewhere between the rhetoric and visions of both parties. His goal, he said, was to help guide the country, through his leadership, to that imagined golden mean while sticking to his principles

Today, the battle-scarred president who has met almost uniform resistance from the Republicans sees the world differently, or so it seems from the way he talked in Ohio and Pennsylvania. At nearly every stop, he made it clear that he sees November in the starkest of terms and that there can be but one winner. He asked supporters to help deliver a victory in November that would carry a message that his vision is superior to that of the Republicans….

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-then-and-now/2012/07/07/gJQA1A8RUW_story.html

Obama thought he could bring the country together but only under his ideals.  He no longer thinks that, but he still think his ideals work.  $5 trillion in increased debt, over 8% unemployment, growth at 1.9%.  His ideals don’t work either.

3.  11 Ways consumers are helpless at Math

You walk into a Starbucks and see two deals for a cup of coffee. The first deal offers 33% extra coffee. The second takes 33% off the regular price. What's the better deal?

"They're about equal!" you'd say, if you're like the students who participated in a new study published in the Journal of Marketing.  And you'd be wrong. The deals appear to be equivalent, but in fact, a 33% discount is the same as a 50 percent increase in quantity. Math time: Let's say the standard coffee is $1 for 3 quarts ($0.33 per quart). The first deal gets you 4 quarts for $1 ($0.25 per quart) and the second gets you 3 quarts for 66 cents ($.22 per quart).

The upshot: Getting something extra "for free" feels better than getting the same for less. The applications of this simple fact are huge. Selling cereal? Don't talk up the discount. Talk how much bigger the box is! Selling a car? Skip the MPG conversion. Talk about all the extra miles.

There are two broad reasons why these kind of tricks work. First: Consumers don't know what the heck anything should cost, so we rely on parts of our brains that aren't strictly quantitative. Second: Although humans spend in numbered dollars, we make decisions based on clues and half-thinking that amount to innumeracy.

Here are 10 more ways consumers are bad at math, with an assist from historian and author William Poundstone.

(2) We're heavily influenced by the first number. You walk into a high-end store, let's say it's Hermès, and you see a $7,000 bag. "Haha, that's so stupid!" you tell your friend. "Seven grand for a bag!" Then you spot an awesome watch for $367. Compared to a Timex, that's wildly over-expensive. But compared to the $7,000 price tag you just put to memory, it's a steal. In this way, stores can massage or "anchor" your expectations for spending.
 
(3) We're terrified of extremes. We don't like feeling cheap, and we don't like feeling duped. Since we're not sure what things are worth, we shy away from prices that appear too high or too low. Stores can employ our bias for moderation against us. Here's a great story:  

People were offered 2 kinds of beer: premium beer for $2.50 and bargain beer for $1.80. Around 80% chose the more expensive beer. Now a third beer was introduced, a super bargain beer for $1.60 in addition to the previous two. Now 80% bought the $1.80 beer and the rest $2.50 beer. Nobody bought the cheapest option.

Third time around, they removed the $1.60 beer and replaced with a super premium $3.40 beer. Most people chose the $2.50 beer, a small number $1.80 beer and around 10% opted for the most expensive $3.40 beer.

In short: We are all Goldilocks….

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-then-and-now/2012/07/07/gJQA1A8RUW_story.html

I found this to be very interesting.  More to read so click the link. 

Delusional Democrats

What’s New Today

Story #1 asks who is really living in the past, the D’s or the R’s.  #2 goes on to ask who really is Barack Obama.  #3 talks about campaign contributions.  #4 conjectures about Obama and is he deluding himself.  #5 looks at all the delusions going on with the left.  

Today’s Thoughts

News greenies don’t want to know.  A cotton/cloth canvas bag user does over twice the damage to the environment that a plastic bag using grocery shopper who throws away every plastic bag they get immediately after each shopping trip.

Congratulations to President Obama.  He just played his 100^th round of golf. 

1.  Who’s living in the past?  

The 1950s and 1960s — taxes were high, unions were strong, incomes more equal. And the U.S. economy grew by 3.7% a year. So, Obama seems to suggest, let’s just dial up the economic Way Back Machine — raise taxes on the rich, reregulate industry, boost union power – and we can go back to the future.

But there’s no going back, Mr. President. The post-World War II decades were affected by a host of unique factors, not the least of which was that they came right after a devastating global war that left America’s competitors in ruins. A National Bureau of Economic Research study described the situation this way: “At the end of World War II, the United States was the dominant industrial producer in the world. … This was obviously a transitory situation.”

And as former Bain Capital executive Edward Conard notes in his new book, Unintended Consequences, the size of the U.S. labor force was constrained during those decades by both the 1930s baby bust and casualties from the war. So a surge in jobs and a restricted supply of labor produced fat wage growth. Hoping for a return to that era is futile, Conard concludes…

http://ricochet.com/main-feed/It-s-Obama-Not-Romney-Who-s-Stuck-in-the-1950s

Liberals look back to the 1950s and idealize the economic situation while condemning the social status.  Unfortunately, they don’t seem to understand either situations. 

2.  Who is Obama, really?

Watching President Obama flop around like a fish out of water, careening from gaffe to desperation to dishonesty, I find myself searching for ways to put his troubling behavior into historic perspective.
Is this The Unmaking of a President? Or is it The Unmasking? Perhaps we are witnessing an American Tragedy. Or maybe we’re seeing final proof his election was The Great Mistake.
All those fit the facts, and lead to a shared conclusion. So far, the 2012 election has almost nothing to do with Mitt Romney. Even the GOP doesn’t love its choice, but the race is a dead heat because Obama is so disappointing.

His fall from grace does more than merely confirm the conventional wisdom that elections are a referendum on the incumbent. Notwithstanding White House efforts to make the race about something or someone else, Obama remains the straw that stirs the drink….

…And now comes more unsettling information, thanks to a new biography by David Maraniss, a Washington Post writer and editor.

Earlier excerpts of “Barack Obama, The Story,” made headlines, with one showing Obama as a total pothead and another revealing that a key scene in one of Obama’s own books involved a composite character.

That was just the start. An early review of the full book suggests it will shatter much of what we thought we knew about him. It seems Obama’s memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” is chock full of characters he created to fit his narrative. Not once or twice, but virtually every time he wanted to explain breakthroughs in his celebrated search for identity….

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/invents_own_legend_R8P1Yi1RX5jxywOCAJICoL#ixzz1y2qPmIiY

Obama basically is a fictional character even if you are inside his skin.  He doesn’t know who he is so how in the world could the rest of us know? 

3.  Smart Money vs Angry Money 

There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth as, in the spring, it appeared that forces supporting Mitt Romney would be able to raise about as much money as those supporting Barack Obama. There's even more now that it seems likely that the pro-Romney side will raise and spend more money than the pro-Obama side.

Four years ago, the Obama forces heavily outspent those supporting John McCain. The Obama campaign had enough money to target -- and carry -- heretofore Republican states like North Carolina and Indiana.

That experience made the Democrats spoiled. The prospect that the other side would have as much money as they do struck them as a cosmic injustice. The prospect that it would have more -- heaven forbid!...

…What's really interesting is that, if current projections are right, this will be the third election in a row in which the party holding the White House will be outspent by the opposition….

…Now, despite the clout any incumbent president has, Democrats are likely to be outspent by Republicans….

…In effect the Court said that you can abridge First Amendment rights in order to limit "smart money" contributions. Smart money, by definition, goes only to incumbents and candidates with a good chance of winning.

But in our last two presidential elections and apparently in this one, the smart money going to the party in power has been outweighed by "angry money" going to the party out of power.

The billionaires and the many, many others fueling the anti-Bush coffers in 2004 believed that the 43rd president had lied America into an unjustified and probably unwinnable war. I didn't agree but, hey, it's a free country and people should be free to try to elect the candidate of their choice.

In 2008 Barack Obama raised a lot of "hope" money and, since it looked like a Democratic year, a lot of smart money. But angry money from Bush haters helped propel his total take to record levels.

This year there's no doubt that the billionaires and the many, many others contributing to the Romney campaign and pro-Romney super-PACs are angry about the Obama Democrats' policies and believe they will be harmful to the nation.

In sum, angry money seems to be trumping smart money in American politics these days.

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/angry-money-gives-funding-edge-gop-and-romney/603471

With the coming election looking to break all records for the money that will be spent, the Democrats will rail against Citizen United.  But in actuality, it will be citizens united that will overcome Obama’s built in fund raising advantage. 

4.  Obama Deludes himself

The U.S. has never before had a President who thinks so little of the American people that he imagines he can win re-election running on the opposite of reality. But that is the reality of President Obama today.
Waving a planted press commentary, Obama recently claimed on the campaign stump, “federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any President in almost 60 years.”
Peggy Noonan aptly summarized in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal  Journal the take away by the still holding majority of Americans living in the real world:

“There is, now, a house-of-cards feel about this administration.  It became apparent some weeks ago when the President talked on the stump – where else? – about an essay by a fellow who said spending growth [under Obama] is actually lower than that of previous Presidents.  This was startling to a lot of people, who looked into it and found the man had left out most spending from 2009, the first year of Mr. Obama’s Presidency.  People sneered: The President was deliberately using a misleading argument to paint a false picture!  But you know, why would he go out there waiving an article that could immediately be debunked?  Maybe because he thought it was true.  That’s more alarming, isn’t it, the idea that he knows so little about the effects of his own economic program that he thinks he really is a low spender.”

What this shows most importantly is that the recognition is starting to break through to the general public regarding the President’s rhetorical strategy that I’ve have been calling Calculated Deception.  The latter is deliberately using a misleading argument to paint a false picture.  That has been a central Obama practice not only throughout his entire presidency, but also as the foundation of his 2008 campaign strategy, and actually throughout his whole career.

Rest assured, Ms. Noonan, that the President is not as nuts as he may seem at times.  He knows very well that he is not a careful spender.  His whole mission is to transform the U.S. not into a Big Government country, but a Huge Government country, because only a country run by a Huge Government can be satisfactorily controlled by superior, all wise and beneficent individuals like himself…. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/06/14/president-obama-the-biggest-government-spender-in-world-history/

Mr. Obama is either bi-polar or he is a desperate politician willing to say anything to try to get reelected.  You be the judge. 

5. Democrats Delude themselves

Licking their wounds after their attempted recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was soundly rebuffed by the Badger State’s voters, Democrats and their public-sector union allies have embraced the underdog mantle. In their dejected telling, the recall’s defeat is entirely attributable to the flood of outside cash to support Mr. Walker. All the standard left-wing scourges - “billionaire” Republicans, the libertarian Koch brothers, the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United - have been trotted out to support this lament. Even the Obama administration has gotten in on the act, with campaign manager Jim Messina alleging that “corporate and special-interest” spending “swung the election” in Mr. Walker’s favor. Democratic strategists despair that the left simply lacks the financial resources to compete with the right on an equal footing.

We can appreciate the allure of this narrative, which exempts the left from any serious reflection about the appeal of its political agenda or the flaws of its recall strategy. Indeed, there is a small kernel of truth to it: While the much-cited media claim that Mr. Walker outspent his Democratic rival, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, by a margin of 7-1 is almost certainly inflated, - the real ratio appears to have been closer to 3-1 - it is true that Mr. Walker was able to raise and spend more than his opponent. But the reasons for Mr. Walker’s spending advantage were unique to the Wisconsin race and are in no way indicative of the balance of spending power between the left and the right. Conventional wisdom and left-wing mythology may cast the GOP as the “party of the rich,” but as we document in our new book, “The New Leviathan,” the facts are closer to the opposite.

The governor’s funding advantage had less to do with the presumptive financial advantage of the right than with the intricacies of Wisconsin’s election finance rules. Those rules allowed Mr. Walker to solicit unlimited contributions from individuals after the recall petitions were filed last November, but they capped the individual contributions his challengers could accept at $10,000. Mr. Walker did not make those rules, though he did use them to his benefit. Counter to the left’s contention, however, the money he raised had nothing to do with the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the case of Citizens United. That decision overturned a ban on federal election spending and did not apply to state election rules. Mr. Walker would have been able to collect the contributions he did even before the court overturned the federal ban. Even if it had applied, the fact is that the court’s decision freed unions as well as corporations to spend money during elections.

Moreover, it’s far from clear that money was decisive in the recall’s defeat. Polls showed that 88 percent of Wisconsin voters had made up their minds about how they would vote even before May, long before campaign spending on last-minute advertising blitzes had a chance to influence the electorate. Discomfortingly for Democrats, the ranks of those decided voters included union members who decided that whatever their disagreements with the governor, they were not in favor of evicting him before the end of his term. Exit polls later showed 38 percent of voters from union households voted for Mr. Walker. Not least, there is the fact that Mr. Walker’s reforms limited unions’ ability to compel political support from their members. Once Mr. Walker’s budget reform bill made union membership optional, unions such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees saw their membership plummet by 45 percent. Of course, it’s easier to invoke the specter of corporate spending than to consider why the state’s public-sector unions have fallen out of favor with traditional union members and supporters….

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/15/defeated-in-recall-democrats-cry-foul/

Truth and facts are not strong points for the political left.  You should always double check anything the left contends to be the case.  Four times out of five you will find that there is only a small germ of truth, if there is any at all.

Should Obama and the Democrats be Hopeful? Today's answer: NO

What’s new Today

Story #1 is a look at Romney and Obama as executives.  Needless to say if Obama was the head of a private company he would have been fired by now.  #2 goes contrary from the Democrat script that the Republican field is weak and states actually it is very strong.  #3 give the Democrats the reasons they shouldn’t be gaining hope.  The numbers still are horrible.  #4 talks about the poll of Obama’s approval on the economy.  It’s at 36%.  #5 is one of the crusades by Hollywood for a killer.  The timing makes me wonder if these people think Obama will lose in November so this would be a good time for him to pardon a cop killer.  #6 is a column by a leftwing columnist about why Obama is right to attack the Catholic Church.  I guess stupidity is epidemic among the left.  #7 is another story pointing out some of the weaknesses in China.  #8 has a number of pictures of the cold in Eastern Europe.  #9 is another attempt by warmists to counter the creaming they are taking in the press. 

1.  Romney vs Obama

…Romney and Bain Capital were successful. Otherwise, investors would have stopped supplying them with millions of dollars to invest in various businesses.

Unlike tax dollars, which are paid to the federal government regardless of the desire of the taxpayer, the amount of investment given to a company such as Bain Capital is the result of free choice and is reflective of the investors' expectation that their investment will grow in value.

In other words, those who were supplying Bain Capital with investment dollars had confidence in the decisions and actions of Mitt Romney while he was leading Bain Capital.

Now let's consider Obama's fiscal job performance. Like Romney, who worked to turn around businesses that were struggling to grow, Obama, as he often reminds us, inherited a struggling economy. With three years as the "chief executive officer" of the largest economy, let's evaluate Obama's performance in the same way in which we evaluate a corporate executive such as Romney.

What about corporate debt? While corporate debt has its place in a business, such as to finance the expansion of a business unit, too much debt can quickly become detrimental to the corporation. President Barack Obama has overseen U.S. debt growth from  $10.6 trillion to $15.2 trillion. That represents a 43% increase in the total debt under the leadership of America's CEO. For the first time in history, the United States has received a downgrade of its sovereign debt rating, something thought nearly impossible prior to the Obama presidency.

Worse yet, total debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has risen from 57% in 2000 to 94% in 2010 and now has passed 100%. We as a nation, under President Barack Obama, are nearly to the point in which we are borrowing more than we're producing.

Any CEO with these types of performance figures would, to say the least, have great difficulty in keeping his job. The shareholders of the company would want him ousted and would seek a new CEO with a proven track record of success. It would be inconceivable for the company to sign the CEO to a new four-year contract after his dismal performance….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/fiscal_skills_romney_vs_obama.html#ixzz1lE0NCk2P

In fact, it is Obama’s record that dooms his reelection chances. 

2.  The Republican Presidential Field

For the first time in my life, and I have been following Republican primaries closely since before I was old enough to vote, I have found myself vacillating among candidates.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is not from a lack of viable candidates, but from an excess. In November, I will gladly support whoever prevails. That includes Ron Paul, who, to the media's shock, already polls in a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama.

The man responsible for sharpening this year's field is Newt Gingrich. Were he not running, the other candidates would likely have contented themselves with wrapping pre-packaged platitudes around debate questions, much as candidates of both parties have done in every election post-Reagan. To get a sense of the unusual quality of this year's Republican field, watch a debate among the Democratic "dream" candidates of 2008 -- a bonfire of banalities if there ever was one.

Gingrich actually answers the questions. When asked by CNN's Jon King if he would like to address the allegations made by his ex-wife, Gingrich uttered four words that likely won him the South Carolina primary: "No. But I will." His sharpness exposed the relative dullness of early drop-outs like Pawlenty, Bachmann, Huntsman, and Perry. It also forced the survivors to hone their own speaking and debating skills. As Mitt Romney accurately argued in his Florida acceptance speech, "[a] competitive primary does not divide us. It prepares us."…

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/underestimating_mitt_and_newt.html#ixzz1lEA14kXp

It is fun to watch the left get hopeful.  Right now you have the Republicans fighting among themselves while Obama sits on the sidelines.  Do they really think the slight upturn in Obama’s fortunes will stand when the Republicans start actually bringing him, his record, and his scandals into focus? 

3.  Why the Democrats should be worried

To hear Democrats (and much of the media) tell it, President Obama is a man on the rebound. The president turned in a strong State of the Union speech, picked a smart political fight over taxing the rich and authorized another heroic Navy SEAL mission in terrorist territory. Sounds like a recipe for reelection, they say.

There is a big problem with this Pollyanna punditry: There are a bunch of real-time numbers coming in that tell a much different tale.

In short, there’s a new CBO report that shows unemployment likely to climb to nearly 9 percent by the election, there’s polling data showing Obama tied or trailing Mitt Romney in the most important swing states (and doing only marginally better against Ron Paul), and there is mounting evidence that the assumption of a decisive Obama fundraising advantage for the fall might be flat wrong. All of this is happening while Republicans are at their worst, with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich spending millions of dollars and using all of their air time explaining why the other is untrustworthy, deeply flawed and eminently beatable by Obama.

Let’s look at each:…

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72329.html#ixzz1lEC7Xs2D

Obama is in trouble.  The current leftwing spin is the equivalent of whistling in the graveyard. 

4.   Obama economic approval at 36%

In another indication of the difficulty President Obama's reelection campaign faces, only 36 percent of likely voters grade the administration's handling of the economy at good or excellent, according to a new Rasmussen poll.

In a national survey of 1,000 likely voters January 31-February 1, a whopping 62 percent grade the president at fair to poor, with poor collecting the largest number: 45 percent.

Still, Democratic officials say that they see a positive trend built on slightly better unemployment and housing numbers that could end up helping Obama in his reelection….

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/obamas-economic-approval-just-36-percent/355126

From those numbers we see only 2% seem undecided.  And once again I say the Democrats are whistling in the graveyard. 

5.  Hollywood Urges Pardon for Cop Killer

On top of the campaign to pressure New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to release terrorist killer Judith Clark from prison, the far-left is asking President Obama to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, an American Indian activist who was convicted of the execution-style murders of FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams.

February 4 has been declared “International Day of Solidarity with Leonard Peltier,” who was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.

A group working for Peltier’s release, in an email to its supporters, says, “Several high-level meetings (some with Administration officials) are expected to occur in Washington, D.C., in early 2012.” No officials were named, however.

The campaign has the support of actor Danny Glover, whose film company, Louverture Films, has taken up the cause of freeing the convicted killer. The Glover company, which has received over $19.7 million from the Marxist regime of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, is involved in the publicity campaign for “Wind Chases the Sun,” a film that glamorizes Peltier…

… The FBI has officially opposed any form of release or clemency for Peltier. In 2009, Thomas J. Harrington, FBI Executive Assistant Director in the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, testified in opposition to parole for Peltier, saying, “The intentional and vicious attack by Mr. Peltier was not simply a blatant attack on two FBI special agents; it was an attack on law enforcement as a whole—an attack on the rule of law. The inevitable haziness brought on by the passage of time does not diminish the brutality of the crimes or the lifelong torment to the surviving families”….

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44345

Now these kinds of celebrity causes happen frequently enough, but the timing of this one may indicate that the left is looking to an Obama defeat in November and they want to get him to act while he still can. 

6.   The Left Wing Empire Tries to Strike Back

Last Sunday, the Catholic Church declared war on President Obama. Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida quickly took up the cause, signaling the outlines of a serious religious rumble to come in 2012.

The president should be ready for the fight, knowing that on this one he is right.

At Sunday Mass, Catholic parishioners across the country were read letters denouncing the Obama administration’s recent decision to require religiously affiliated hospitals, colleges, and charities to offer health insurance coverage to employees for contraception and the “morning-after pill.’’ On Monday, Rubio, a Republican star who is often mentioned as a VP candidate, introduced a bill that would override the Obama policy by allowing religious institutions that morally oppose contraception to refuse to cover it.

But not all employees of Catholic institutions are Catholics. Why should their employers impose their religious beliefs on them and deny coverage for birth control and other medical care? As long as those Catholic institutions are getting taxpayer money, they should follow secular rules. That’s the Obama administration’s argument, and it makes sense….

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/02/02/catholic-church-unfair-attack-against-obama/Qn99IhKZGNBGMA7ZPCxziO/story.html

What absolute nonsense.  A vegetarian could work at a steak restaurant and might be eligible for ½ price meals.  Should we force the steak restaurant to have a vegetarian menu?  In this case, if the employee is unhappy with their benefits, they can get a job somewhere else.  As for getting taxpayer money, they are also performing services for those taxpayers which saves lives.  This is the most stupid argument the left could come up with, but it is in fact about the only argument they could come up with, at least if you’ve read the first amendment. 

7.  The Economic Crisis Slowly Spreads to China

Although indicators showed the Chinese economy faltered only at the end of September, there had been a growing sense of pessimism inside the country for months before then. Beijing, after all, could build only so many “ghost cities” before citizens began to notice. As Joseph Sternberg of the Wall Street Journal Asia said on the John Batchelor Show last Wednesday, “people inside China seem to be losing faith in the Chinese growth story that we’ve been hearing so much about for the past few years.” Estimates of capital flight are sketchy, but it appears there was $34 billion of it in the third quarter of last year and a $100 billion in the fourth.

Not every Chinese citizen is in the position to export cash, so the next best tactic for the nervous is to buy gold, a refuge from plunging property prices and declining stock markets as well as an anticipated depreciation of their currency. “Within China,” notes  Michael Pettis of Peking University, “many are going to argue that the rapid decline in the trade surplus, coupled with unmistakable evidence of flight capital, means that the PBOC should devalue the RMB.” And the fact that China’s leaders in public are talking about the adverse impact of the European crisis on China weighs heavily on sentiment.

The worst thing about capital flight and gold purchases is that they drain liquidity out of the Chinese economy just when it is needed most. Beijing can continue to work its magic as long as strict capital controls keep money inside the country. Once they fail to do so, however, all bets are off. The purchasing of gold, of course, results in the exporting of cash….

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2012/01/29/why-are-the-chinese-buying-record-quantities-of-gold/2/

China is a fascinating subject.  It is a coming power, but the underlying  shortcomings of its system certainly restrict where it can end up. 

8.  Baby its cold outside

We’ve had a mild winter in the USA so far.  But that doesn’t mean it is mild everywhere.  Some gorgeous pictures from around Europe of a harsh winter. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2095052/Think-cold-HERE-Beautiful-pictures-globe-world-freezing.html#ixzz1lDekjZn7

9.  AGW:  Response to Trenberth letter

Trenberth argue:

Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.

Wrong answer!!

If you need surgery you DON’T want “a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.” What you want is “a highly experienced expert in the field who has CONVINCING EVIDENCE THAT HIS OR HER OPERATIONS HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL!”

And if before I go to a dentist, I would like evidence that the dentist does not pull the wrong teeth (even on occasion).

Unfortunately, there is no convincing evidence that climate models can successfully predict future climate — and I mean “climate” not just “temperature.” [The latter is just one aspect of the climate and for many impacts it may not even be the most relevant.]

Climate models, which are the source of the apocalyptic vision of global warming, have not been validated using data that were not used in their development. Even the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) and the IPCC acknowledge as much. Specifically, the IPCC does not say that “all” features of current climate or past climate changes can be reproduced, as a reliable model of climate change ought to be able to do endogenously. In fact, it notes:

“… models still show significant errors. Although these are generally greater at smaller scales, important large scale problems also remain. For example, deficiencies remain in the simulation of tropical precipitation, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (an observed variation in tropical winds and rainfall with a time scale of 30 to 90 days).” (AR4WG1, p. 601).

And the CCSP has this to say in its 2008 publication, Climate Models: An Assessment of Strengths and Limitations. A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research:

“Climate model simulation of precipitation has improved over time but is still problematic. Correlation between models and observations is 50 to 60% for seasonal means on scales of a few hundred kilometers.” (CCSP 2008:3)….

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/31/on-dentists-cardiologists-climatologists-and-evidence-based-remedies/

The use of ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM or the appeal to authority is not scientific; it is a refuge of scoundrels.