The “Maunder minimum” is a fancy-pants sciency phrase for a little ice age.  A little ice age is a long period of weird weather where it mostly just gets colder for longer over a series of consecutive decades.  These events are predicated on oscillations of total solar radiance, and solar or sunspot activity, which can be plotted, measured, and used to predict long term effects on climate based on previous solar activity in relation to recorded historical temperatures, observations, ice-core data–you know sciency stuff.

We’ve recently left one of those very active solar periods (when it got warmer), which even the scientists who write at Wikipedia refer to as a solar maximum.  During the solar maximum, there was a lot of solar activity and the globe got warmer.  After solar maximums you get the opposite, according to the science, which suggests  a long period of colder temperatures–and more of those Polar vortex thingies.

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Snow and cold are a sign of global warming.   Income is a sign that you don’t pay enough taxes–unless you are a Democrat or in entertainment.  Opposition is a sign that you are a racist, a misognyst hater unless you oppose self-responsibility, affordable government, and low taxes (Republicans, or the TEA Party).   The Affordable Care Act costs more and is less accessible–meaning less care (leaving us with nothing but the act.)   And demanding an extension for unemployment benefits…is a sign of your amazing economic recovery.

Democrats are looking to extend unemployment benefits, again. Why?

Because when Democrats run things, and run them for as long as they have, good paying American jobs are like Bigfoot.  People talk about it.  They want to believe in it. And a few people actually claim to have seen one.  But most everyone else thinks it is a hoax.

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Back in 2008 NH Democrat Jeanne Shaheen scared people with promises that Global Warming was real and that it would put an end to New Hampshire Winters–and our touristy-like winter wonderland of commerce.  It was settled science.  I heard that, didn’t you hear that?

A few years later, after 15 years of flat or declining average global temperatures, the same people who advised Shaheen on that ‘fact’ are insisting that Global Warming now makes it cold, and predicts increased snowfall.   That must be the new “settled science?”

I guess the settled science isn’t that settled yet.  Can we call that a Global Warming Theory induced Gore-tex?  It’s like a vortex but then it’s not, but if you close your eyes and wish real hard….

However unsettling the settled science may be none of this matters until you attack a sitting Democrat US Senator by comparing what she claimed with reality.

That’s the cue for the progressive flying monkeys to attack.

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With all of the talk of free school lunches, the need to extend unemployment rates, and the absolute need (according to NH Speaker of the House Norelli (D)) to implement Medicaid Expansion NOW, isn’t it worthwhile to see how “poor” NH really is?

That’s right – we are ranked dead last – where dead last is really best!  Given the fact that LBJ’s Great Society’s “War on Poverty” is now 60 years running at a cost of $15 Trillion and the poverty rate flatlined, the phrase “the poor ye will have with you always”, we now know to be true (an eternal truism, much to the dismay of Progressives who can’t learn from history).

Going to the source, Louisiana is the worst with an official poverty rate of 21.3%.  NH is the nation’s leader 7.5% poverty rate (and coincidentally, one of the best unemployment rates too). 

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Our good neighbors the self-proclaimed “satanists” are up to some mischief in Oklahoma. They want a statue of their depiction of satan next to a Christian display.

This tantrum is a way to identify friendly judges, get some attention, and try and set aside those feelings of insecurity and impotence the devil worshipers have nagging at them now that they are adults and have to deal with people other than the weak parents they were used to dominating from two years old until now.

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We all know that President Obama hates rich people (“I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money“) and he sees “income inequality” as something to be done in additional to use as a political campaigning club.  Instead of trying to lift up the poor, he’s all about redistribution in a retributionist fashion – take from the rich and middle class and give it to the poor.  Well, he could take from these folks – looks like they’ve done VERY well and ought to be ripe for the plucking answering the call to “give a little more”.  From Big Government:

• UnitedHealth Executive Vice President Anthony Welters raised over $500,000 for Obama in 2012. Wall Streeters expect UnitedHealth stock to rocket 40% over the next two years. UnitedHealth “also won big contracts to help implement the [Obamacare] rollout.”
• Obamacare winner Qualcomm has a subsidiary called Qualcomm Life that Schweizer says is “specifically designed to profit off Obamacare exchanges.” Qualcomm former Chairman Irwin Jacobs raised over $500,000 for Obama’s campaign in 2012.
• HBJ Investments chief Jay Snyder bundled over $500,000 for Obama’s campaign. HBJ invests in healthcare medical companies and pharmaceuticals and is “positioned to cash in on Obamacare.”

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No one would ever mistake General “Blood N Guts” George Patton (“L’audace, toujours l’audace”) with an Establishment Republican.  Why?  Maha Rushie nails it:

What they ought to do, the Republicans ought to just say, “Let’s just extend ’em for the rest of the year and put it off the table.” That’s the Republicans’ usual plan. Just agree with the Democrats and then get it off the table and then Republicans will say, “We’ll come back and we’ll nail ’em on the debt limit, or we’ll nail ’em on the debt ceiling, or we’ll nail ’em on the budget.” So if they were to stay in character, the Republicans would say, “In an attempt to steal the compassion issue –” In fact, I’m gonna suggest this right now.

Attention inside-the-Beltway Republicans. The way to deal with this is to tell the Democrats not three months, you want to extend these emergency benefits to the end of the year and get it off the table. Take the issue away from the Democrats so you can’t be hurt by it during the campaign. And I guarantee you if there are any inside-the-Beltway Republicans who just heard this, they’ll think it’s brilliant and they might actually propose it. “My God, if we got Limbaugh on our side on this what’s to stop us?” Well, it’s what they’ve been doing with every issue, agree with it, get it off the table so it doesn’t hurt us. That’s why they’re doing with amnesty, let’s just get rid of it. The issue’s killing us.

Seems right – the “get it off the table” Republicans.  So, too scared to stand up against the Democrat Political Club du jour?  Just take it off the table by going along with it.  How many times have we seen this just the last two years in DC?  It’s always “give in now to shut down the voices, and we’ll run away to runaway another day”.

Here in NH?  From today’s Laconia Daily Sun:

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Cringed is what I did when I saw this on WMUR 9 this evening – especially when the kid’s head was SLAMMED into the concrete / cinder block wall.  And the Seabrook, NH cops just laughed and smirked.  Even looking directly into the camera, just smiling away.  I guess they believed that the rumored “brotherhood omerta” was in play – they’d be covered:

Mike Bergeron was the guy in the video.  Drunk? High?  Sleep walking?  I dunno but he didn’t look like he was all there.  But then again, it doesn’t matter.  What these three of the thin blue line did was wrong.  Once in custody, they are responsible for his well-being.  Slamming his head against the wall does not heighten that well-being. From the YouTube description:  

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Yet another sad story on the results of Obamacare on families.  Somewhere in here, I did a post where a single mom (grown daughter) had to buy a new policy as Obama & Sebelius decided that the healthcare policy that the Mom had was “junk”.  No, this Mom was not judged capable of picking a plan that was suitable and affordable for her – Progressives are convinced that none of us can choose wisely.  She wanted to continue to be self-responsible and self-supporting and in doing so, continue that self-esteem that “I can be independent, pay my own way, and be self-reliant”.  Obama & Sebelius’s policies decided otherwise – their “socialist Potemkin marketplace” immediately clapped her into the Government jail of Medicaid – one way in and no way out.  They took away her self-esteem by telling her that they know that she can no longer support herself and gave her only their option – Government healthcare.

Now, another story.  I’ve been writing for years about the school systems / teachers / Govt believing that your kids really do belong to them: feed them 3 squares a day in school (even when schools are closed), clothe them, provide daycare for them in school, provide healthcare clinics for them in school, and take them out of school for abortions if they feel one is needed.   Now on the flip side, the Obama Administration has jiggered the rules so that parents that want to take care of their kids and provide for their kids healthcare wise, can’t.  So these parents must “give up” their kids to the government (reformatted, emphasis mine):

…Zack is married with children and self-employed. That used to be a rough row to hoe for insurance purposes. Now it’s an impossible one.  In the past, Zack had somehow managed to insure his family under Washington’s stringent insurance requirement regime, which had chased away many insurers and bid up premiums. It was expensive to cover his family but he worked hard and they found a way.  Obamacare presented them with special difficulties. Zack thought he was going to have to pay several hundred dollars more a month for roughly the same level of coverage for him and his wife, before you even factored in the kids. They didn’t have the money for it.

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Interesting article on Frank Luntz who I know only by his multiple appearances on Hannity (Fox News) or after debates of one type or another.  He (or the host) asks a focus group of ordinary folks of mixed political persuasions and either getting “hand raise” answers or “intensity dialing”.  Well, I haven’t seen much of him lately, and as this snippet from the Left leaning Atlantic shows, he is despairing of our future since his “claim to fame” is that he listens to people (before doing his political wordcrafting):

…It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn’t listen to each other as they once had. They weren’t interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. “They want to impose their opinions rather than express them,” is the way he describes what he saw. “And they’re picking up their leads from here in Washington.” Haven’t political disagreements always been contentious, I ask? “Not like this,” he says. “Not like this.” 

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