Steve MacDonald

Michael Barone has a piece in the Washington Examiner whose thrust is to address the UN panels historic downgrading of past apocalyptic rhetoric regarding mans so-called impact on global climate.  We’ve apparently been given a 17 year waiver from the universe, something the ‘war’mists call a pause, a pause that conservatives note better explains the brief spell of warming amidst a much longer period of cooling.

Prior to Mann-made global warming, with the hockey stick seen-round-the-world, a tool ideally suited for the cold weather that preceded it and the cooling that followed it, we were doomed by an impending ice-age.  It warms for a few years, Al Gore writes a book, and it hasn’t warmed since.

All well documented but that wasn’t Barones’ point. In the  Examiner article he describes faith-based Mann made global warming as a religion, and in terms that make it clear that this is exactly what it is.

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A few years back then State Senator Jeanne Shaheen set the ball rolling toward declining care options in New Hampshire by acting as a shill for Blue Cross Blue Shield.  She wrote and husbanded (sexist!) SB 711 through the legislature until it became law.  The end result was fewer choices and higher premiums.

While health insurance coverage was little affected by Shaheen’s reforms, consumer choice was badly damaged. By 1997, the number of commercial health insurers serving New Hampshire dwindled to five from a previous high of 12. Those remaining in the market reduced their insurance offerings to cover only high-deductible, catastrophic-type health insurance plans.

Shaheen as a US Senator was the vote, as far as we’re concerned–and since she did actually cast a vote, that made ObamaCare (see also ShaheenCare) law; a law that has reduced the already Shaheenified number of available providers in the state to accommodate Shaheen Care2.0….to just one.

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The (Un)Affordable (Diminished)Care Act(like it does any of the things promised) includes mountains of evil not the least of which is this which should put a stake in the heart of any Democrat narrative about supporting American Families.

If they (a 60 year old couple with no kids) have identical earnings totaling $65,000, which will usually net down to $50,000 or below after all income and payroll taxes, their Obamacare exchange Silver Plan premium next year with the same earnings will be $16,382, or about one-third of what used to be their take-home pay. (And they call it the “Affordable Care Act”?)

What can this couple do? Well, they could decide to earn a few thousand dollars less, which will negate the five-figure premium hit. Encouraging ordinarily willing workers to put in less effort isn’t good in any economy, but especially not this one. But if either spouse’s earnings are unpredictable or hard to precisely track, they could still “mess up” and get socked with a premium they can’t afford.

The “easiest” solution would be to avoid the “wedding tax” entirely by getting divorced while still living together.

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Let me be clear.  I think it is awesome that this kid wants to break a record and increase ‘awareness” and I think we need more of these adventurous sorts in every age group, but will he be increasing awareness of his preconceived notions about the climate or educating us on how what he sees contradicts what he has been told he should believe?

Liautaud will venture out on Nov. 23 on a 40-day expedition. His goal is to bring attention to climate change, an issue he has been passionate about since a young age. Liautaud talked about his past arctic ventures and upcoming expedition alongside the founder of the Climate Reality Project, former Vice President Al Gore, Monday atSocial Good Summit.

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Banned book week began Sunday, September 22nd, and runs until Saturday the 28th.  They even have their own web site.  http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/

I’m always a bit cautious when people start tossing the censorship thing around and the “banning books” crusade is as likely as any to declare the refusal of a group (school, library, whatever) to include a book in its collection or curriculum, or to exclude one, as “banning” or “censorship.” The actual word for this is choice.  People, parents, societies, cultures, school districts, towns and states, even individuals all exercise choices about material or activities deemed appropriate.  Their exclusion is not censorship unless it is statutory and total.

A store that sells travel books has not banned all other books unrelated to travel.  It has simply chosen not to make them available.  And neither schools nor libraries are required to carry every piece of rubbish simply because someone has put it between a front and back cover and named it a book.

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The Democrat “conversation” about gun violence is dangerous.  It is dangerous because in its obsessive tunnel-vision group-think it purposefully ignores all acts of violence and their escalation in the absence of armed, law abiding citizens.

From NPR

There are fewer than 13 million firearms in circulation in Russia, compared with an estimated 300 million in the United States. That works out to about 9 guns per 100 people in Russia and closed to 100 guns per 100 people in America.

The most recent for Russia show that there were 21,603 killings in 2009.

According to the FBI, the United States had 13,636 homicides in 2009 with a population that is more than twice as large. More than 80 percent of those killings were gun-related.

It’s difficult to make a direct comparison of gun homicides in the two countries because Russia doesn’t break down its murder statistics.

Three observations.

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