2013-- 17 Years Without Global Warming

"You see? I told you that my election was the moment that the Earth would begin to cool."

But... but... but... I thought the science was settled.

From The Daily Caller:

Hold your champagne glasses high this holiday season, because the end of 2013 marks the 17th year without global warming. 

This year has been trying for climate scientists and environmentalists who have been trying hard to explain away the 17-year hiatus in global warming and link “extreme weather” to rising greenhouse gas emissions — despite strong evidence to the contrary. There has been a breakdown in the manmade global warming consensus, and some even argue we are headed for an ice age. 

[...]  

The United Nations climate bureaucracy’s latest global warming report was called “hilarious” by a leading scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Richard Lindzen said the UN’s report “has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence” because they continue to proclaim with ever greater certainty that mankind is causing global warming, despite their models continually being wrong. 

“Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean,” Lindzen said. “However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans.”

 

Going to ground in deep ocean... It's sneaky, that hiding heat.

And it's one more reason why you shouldn't all your faith into politically motivated scientists and science. This universe is far too complicated for that.

Carolyn Lawson, Overseer of Oregon's ObamaCare Exchange, Resigns

What?! Why?! Was it because no one has been able to sign up with the exchange unless they were getting Medicaid? Weird.


From The Oregonian: (via Jammie at JWF):

Carolyn Lawson, the embattled state technology executive who oversaw much of the development of Oregon's troubled health insurance exchange, has resigned for personal reasons.   

It was Lawson, chief information officer at the Oregon Health Authority, who decided the state could manage the complex exchange project itself, rather than hire a private-sector systems integrator, a decision since criticized by her superiors. Lawson also was close to Oracle Corp., the California technology giant that has been blamed for doing shoddy work and repeatedly missing deadlines.  

Nearly three months after the federal deadline for a functional health exchange website, Oregon's exchange has emerged as a technological train wreck and a PR nightmare. The state has paid more than $160 million and a fully functional site remains weeks -- perhaps months -- away.   

State officials have been forced to spend even more money gearing up a massive system of temporary employees and contractors to manually process paper applications for health insurance. 

Lawson started work for Oregon on July 1, 2011. The state paid her $178,992 a year. 

As The Oregonian reported Sunday, the exchange has been plagued by poor work by Oracle. Miscues by state managers have also figured prominently in the exchange's issues.

Wow. That is a lot of money shelled out for abject failure. But was it Flawson's failure? The answer is yes and no.

As Fox News noted:

Oregon leaders bragged for two years that it would have one of the nation's most advanced insurance marketplaces, but they were embarrassed when the online enrollment site wasn't ready to launch on schedule in October. It still doesn't work nearly three months later. 

The exchange has had to rely exclusively on paper applications, and it hired or reassigned more than 400 workers to process them manually. Oregon has been the slowest state to enroll people in private insurance, though the pace has picked up significantly in the past two weeks.  

[...]  

Lawson came under fire a year ago when state lawmakers accused her of misleading them about available technologies. More recently, technology experts and her own boss have laid blame for the problem with her decision to have the state act as the project's systems integrator, a sort of general contractor to oversee the complex integration of disparate parts of multiple vendors. 

Lawson was hired in 2011 to oversee technology projects for the two state agencies that administer health and human services programs. The state had just approved creating a health insurance exchange, and it was tacked onto a separate project to modernize the internal computer systems for both agencies. 

Lawson was responsible for delivering the technology on a very tight schedule. 

The $48 million federal grant funding Lawson's work ran out unexpectedly in May. The development work was hastily handed over to staff at Cover Oregon, a semi-autonomous state agency created to run the exchange business using Lawson's technology.

So Oregon has their highly paid scapegoat and she's back in California. If it wasn't for Lawson, the exchange would be functioning beautifully... Uh, right?

Pat Archbold has the Best Analysis of the Roots of "Duck Dynasty" Flap So Far

I've been busy and haven't really chimed in on the whole "Duck Dynasty" mess because (a) I don't watch the show and (b) the whole thing isn't a Constitutional battle as people are making it out to be. Robertson has every right to say what he did, and A&E has every right to enforce their own restriction on what their employees say. Likewise the American public has every right to tell A&E and that they're bumbling buffoons-- as their mostly crappy lineup clearly shows-- and that they are currently cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Roberton, or whoever arranged the interview that causing this flap, was foolish to allow himself to be interviewed by GQ. It's clear that the magazine only wanted to deride him, make him seems a hypocrite, and show him as a foolish backwoods idiot-- a view that the Leftist elite hold of all Americans not living in the upscale sections of New York, Chicago, L.A. San Francisco, D.C and the Eastern seaboard.

Yet, as Pat Archbold at the National Catholic Register aptly points out, holding the Robertsons and their friends up to ridicule has been the point of the show from the very beginning.

From Pat Archbold's piece (h/t Donald Douglas at American Power):

To understand the why, we have to go back to the beginning. Duck Dynasty is not the show that they wanted, it is the show that got away from them. 

It seems what the producers intended and what A&E envisioned with the show is much different than the show that they ended up with, but they didn't do anything about it because it was so wildly popular and so wildly profitable. But even with all the money, they have never really been comfortable with what happened. 

This is what happened. The whole idea of the show was to parade these nouveau riche Christian hillbillies around so that we could laugh at them. "Look at them," we were supposed to say. "Look how backward they are! Look what they believe! Can you believe they really live this way and believe this stuff? See how they don't fit in? HAHAHA"  

When the producers saw the way the show was shaping up, different than they envisioned it, they tried to change course. They tried to get the Robertson's to tone down their Christianity, but to their eternal credit they refused. They tried to add fake cussin' to the show by inserting bleeps where no cussword was uttered. At best, they wanted to make the Robertson's look like crass buffoons. At worst they wanted them to look like hypocrites. 

They desperately wanted us to laugh at the Robertsons. Instead, we loved them. 

A&E wanted us to point fingers at them and laugh at them. But something else happened entirely. Millions upon millions of people tuned in, not to laugh at them, but to laugh with them.  

And then we pointed at them. We pointed at them and said things like, "I wish my family was more like them. I wish we prayed together as a family. I wish we were together like the Robertsons." 

By the time this all happened, A&E had a conundrum. They knew who the Robertsons were and what they believe and they still held it in disdain. But they really liked the money. Really liked the money. So they lived with it. 

But the progressives whose bank accounts were not growing fatter because of these backward rubes were never inclined to look the other way. They hate the show and they really hate the response to the show. They want it destroyed. 

Many magazines and interviewers have tried to get the Robertsons to trip up so they could pounce. When Phil backed the Christian viewpoint on homosexuality and added some personal asides about how he just couldn't understand it, they had their moment. 

I suspect that the folks at A&E, who always disliked the positive Christian message in the show of which Phil is the primary proponent, saw their chance. They want to keep the cash but dial down the Christianity. With Phil out, perhaps they could get the show they always wanted. 

I suspect that the Robertsons are more principled than that and A&E will end up disappointed on many levels. The Roberstons are who they are and I suspect the money means a great deal more to A&E than it does to them. 

It will be interesting to see whether A&E likes the money more than they hate the Christianity. I wouldn't be surprised if the hate wins.

The real story is how much the Left hates people like the Robertsons. They hate them with a white-hot intensity that is matched only by their conviction that their Marx-based beliefs (which are always atheistic-- no matter what ill-informed or foolish theists might think or say) taught to them by college professors, Hollywood, trendy writers, magazines, and the talking heads of news shows is the "Truth." Yes, capital T.

Indeed Leftist thought, which was responsible for the majority and the certainly the bloodiest of the 20th Century genocides, demands this hatred. Marxist thought demands genocide, a wiping clean of competing political, ethical, and economic thought through murder.

And genocide, of course, can only be accomplished with an intense hatred of those butchered. It's a hatred borne of disdain toward the victim, often buoyed by jealousy, and absolved by the "hope" that the world will be a better place once the victims have been expunged from the Earth.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the Robertsons will be killed by A&E or that America will soon be awash in blood.

What I am saying is that the Left's very political essence is based in hatred, envy, a demand for conformity, and an egotistical disdain for those who hold differing views. Keep this in mind in the coming debates regarding ObamaCare and Obama's coming regulatory nightmares. Watch as hard working Americans, the seriously ill, the religious (exempting Muslims, of course), and the elderly become demonized.

Gallup: Record High in U.S. Say Big Government Greatest Threat



Graph from Gallup site

Well, I'm sure that Gallup was only polling racists.

From Gallup:

Seventy-two percent of Americans say big government is a greater threat to the U.S. in the future than is big business or big labor, a record high in the nearly 50-year history of this question. The prior high for big government was 65% in 1999 and 2000. Big government has always topped big business and big labor, including in the initial asking in 1965, but just 35% named it at that time.  

The latest update comes from a Dec. 5-8 poll. Gallup has documented a steady increase in concern about big government since 2009, rising from 55% in March 2009 to 64% in November 2011 and 72% today. This suggests that government policies specific to the period, such as the Affordable Care Act -- perhaps coupled with recent revelations of government spying tactics by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden -- may be factors.

Yeah, those may be factors-- however the numbers shot up just at the beginning of Obama's presidency. It could be that his use of government agencies-- especially the IRS and EPA-- to intimidate political opponents might have something to do with it. Oh, and also his rather undemocratic actions, such as selective law enforcement, unconstitutional actions, and attempts to bully and control the press, might be contributing factors too. Just sayin'.

Obama's Approval Ratings Lowest Since Truman-- Except Nixon Post-Watergate

"Don't put too much stock in these numbers. It was mostly racists that were polled."

Yet, (surprise!) The Washington Post is making lame excuses for him.

From The Washington Post (via Ace of Spades):

President Obama is ending his fifth year in office matching the worst public approval ratings of his presidency, with record numbers of Americans saying they disapprove of his job performance and his once-hefty advantages over Republicans in Congress eroded in many areas, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. 

His position is all the more striking when compared with his standing a year ago, as he was preparing for his second inauguration after a solid reelection victory [Solid victory? It was a victory bouyed by lies ("You can keep your insurance if you like it."), the IRS attacking political opponents leading up to the election, and an intentional delay of enacting his most damaging policies and regulations by the EPA, HHS, and other executive agencies. He is most definitely president asterisk.] That high note [high note? how about comparing his numbers right after Obama's first inauguration so we can see how much the American people disapprove of his total performance.] proved fleeting as the president faced a series of setbacks, culminating in the botched rollout of his Affordable Care Act two months ago [rollout and Americans finally finding out what was actually in this behemoth law].  

[...]  

The president’s overall approval rating stands at 43 percent, while disapproval is at 55 percent. Those numbers are virtually identical to a poll taken a month ago. At this time last year, 54 percent approved of Obama’s overall performance and 42 disapproved. Even after the huge losses his party suffered in the 2010 midterms, Obama’s approval rating was higher, at 49 percent, than it is today and was slightly more positive than negative. 

Obama ends his fifth year in office with lower approval ratings than almost all other recent two-term presidents. At this point in 2005, for example, former president George W. Bush was at 47 percent positive, 52 percent negative. All other post-World War II presidents were at or above 50 percent at this point in their second terms, except Richard M. Nixon, whose fifth year ended in 1973 with an approval rating of 29 percent because of the Watergate scandal that later brought impeachment and his resignation.

The article goes on to say that Obama's on his back and this is only a challenging bump blah, blah, blah. We'll see how challenging it will be when 50 to 80 million more American lose their insurance plans to ObamaCare.

Anyway, the fact is Obama and the Democrats are in dire straits. ObamaCare, the IRS scandal, the NSA spying on Americans, record high unemployment, the abysmal economy, all belong to the Democrats. And the heavy hand of Obama's feds are beginning to be felt by normal citizens-- especially through ObamaCare.

Obama's in trouble and the press are just now beginning to understand how bad it is. They'll begin making excuses and probably crying racism ("It's racist to want to keep your insurance!") within the next month.

Fox News Ratings are Higher than CNN, MSNBC and HLN Combined

"I still despise them, for they do not dote upon me, nor so they use messianic pictures of me like this one... And furthermore they do not represent my base-- low information voters who are easily lied to or shamed."

Gee, do you think it's because viewers are tired of one is essentially Leftist propaganda being poured out of the other "news" networks? Or maybe because of the betrayal as these networks touted ObamaCare and slammed opponents as Nazis and racists? Nah. It's because Americans are all racist or something...

From Variety (via Drudge):

It was a down year in terms of overall audience, as every newsie but HLN showed primetime declines from their Presidential Election-driven tallies of 2012. 

According to Nielsen data through Dec. 8, Fox News Channel averaged 1.774 million viewers in primetime (down 13% from 2012) and 297,000 adults 25-54 (down 30%). It was followed by MSNBC with 645,000 viewers and 203,000 adults 25-54 (down 29% in both); CNN with 578,000 (down 15%) and 187,000 adults 25-54 (down 16%); and HLN with 403,000 total viewer (up 21%) and 142,000 in the demo (up 27%). 

Among all basic cable networks in 2013, FNC ranked sixth in primetime while MSNBC was 29th and CNN was 31st. In total day, Fox ran fourth while CNN was 28th and MSNBC ran 30th; in 2012, CNN finished behind MSNBC. CNN and HLN showed some year-over-year gains on a total-day basis, while FNC and MSNBC were down. 

Fox and CNN both made some significant changes to their lineup in 2013, with FNC’s revamped primetime lineup, introduced on Oct. 7, posting gains in both total viewers and adults 25-54 vs. the block’s 2013 season-to-date average. The newest program, “The Kelly File” with Megyn Kelly, has improved the 9 p.m. hour by 23% in total viewers and 13% in adults 25-54, and “The O’Reilly Factor” is the top show in cable news (2.78 million, 439,000 adults 25-54). 

Also of note outside of primetime, “The Five” (5-6 p.m. ET) and “Red Eye” (3-4 a.m. ET) had their most-watched years to date.

I wonder if this means Obama will allow them to ask questions at press conferences? At least he's letting them show up now. Does anybody remember when Obama tried to ban Fox News?

By the way, it seems Google wants you to forget Obama's pettiness, because a search for Obama's boycott leads to barely any links.

Forbes: White House Forces ObamaCare Insurers To Cover Unpaid Patients At A Loss

"A few illegal acts, a sustained propaganda campaign and some unconstitutional acts is all that is needed for ObamaCare to thrive."

Would you expect more from Obama?

From the Forbes article by Avik Roy (h/t Sweetness & Light):

Of all of the last-minute delays, website bungles, and Presidential whims that have marred the roll-out of Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges, what happened on Thursday, December 12 will stand as one of the most lawless acts yet committed by this administration. The White House—having canceled Americans’ old health plans, and having botched the system for enrolling people in new ones—knows that millions of Americans will enter the new year without health coverage. So instead of actually fixing the problem, the administration is retroactively attempting to force insurers to hand out free health care—at a loss—to those whom the White House has rendered uninsured. If Obamacare wasn’t a government takeover of the health insurance industry, then what is it now? 

On Wednesday afternoon, health policy reporters found in their inboxes a friendly e-mail from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announcing “steps to ensure Americans signing up through the Marketplace have coverage and access to the care they need on January 1.” Basically, the “steps” involve muscling insurers to provide free or discounted care to those who have become uninsured because of the problems with healthcare.gov.  

[...]  

The administration could pay insurers to cover up for its mistakes. But that would lead to criticism—as it has in other instances—that the White House is lawlessly throwing taxpayer money at insurers to, well, cover up for its mistakes. So, instead, they’re asking insurers to pay for the mistakes. 

But, of course, the cost of paying for those mistakes won’t end up being paid by insurers, but by consumers, in the form of higher premiums. 

In theory, the Obama administration’s actions aren’t merely illegal—they’re unconstitutional. The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights says that no one can “be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” 

But it will be up to insurers to sue to protect their rights. Like battered wives, they are unlikely to do so. Companies like Aetna and Humana are so terrified that the administration will run them out of business that they are more likely to do what they’re told, and quietly pass the costs on to consumers. The chaos and recriminations have made insurers like UnitedHealth, who have largely stayed out of the exchanges, look smart. 

In 2010, PolitiFact said that the claim that Obamacare was a “government takeover of health care” was its “lie of the year.” The Federal Register disagrees.

There's really nothing Obama won't do in the course of implementing this disaster. Break laws? Sure. Lie? Of course. Deprive people of their life, liberty, and property? Well, that's exactly what ObamaCare is designed to do.

 

WSJ: Obama and IRS Planning to Target Tea Party Again in Advance of 2014 Elections

"Dissenting voices against my fundamental transformation of America are all racist. They shall be punished by the hand of federal agencies... as shall all the enemies of the Light-bringer."

ObamaCare driving down your poll ratings? Then just go with the tried and true tactic of using federal power to attack your political opponents.

From The Wall Street Journal piece by Kimberly A. Strassel:

President Obama keeps claiming that he had no knowledge of the Internal Revenue Service's abusive muzzling of conservative groups. That line is hard to swallow given that his Treasury and IRS are back at it—this time in broad daylight.  

In the media blackout of Thanksgiving week, the Treasury Department dumped a new proposal to govern the political activity of 501(c)(4) groups. The administration claims this rule is needed to clarify confusing tax laws. Hardly. The rule is the IRS's new targeting program—only this time systematic, more effective, and with the force of law. 

That this rule was meant to crack down on the White House's political opponents was never in doubt. What is new is the growing concern by House Ways and Means Committee investigators that the regulation was reverse-engineered—designed to isolate and shut down the same tea party groups victimized in the first targeting round. Treasury appears to have combed through those tea party applications, compiled all the groups' main activities, and then restricted those activities in the new rule.  

"The committee has reviewed thousands of tax exempt applications," says House Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp. "The new regulation so closely mirrors the abused tea-party group applications, it leads me to question if this new proposed regulation is simply another form of targeting."  

Here's how it works. To get or keep tax-exempt status, 501(c)(4) organizations must devote a majority of their work to their "primary" social-welfare purpose. Most tea party groups were set up with a primary purpose of educating Americans on pressing problems—the size of government, the erosion of the Constitution—and did so mainly via nonpartisan voter guides, speakers forums, pamphlets or voter-registration drives.  

What the proposed Treasury/IRS regulation would do is to re-categorize all these efforts as "political activity"—thereby making it all but impossible for tea party groups to qualify for 501(c)(4) status. Say an outfit's primary purpose is educating voters on our unsustainable debt, which it does mainly with a guide explaining the problem and politicians' voting records. Under the new rule, that guide is now "political activity" (rather than "social welfare"), which likely loses the group tax-exempt status. 

The rule, in other words, is not designed to provide helpful "guidance" on allowable activities. It was designed, rather, as Mr. Camp explains, "to put tea party groups out of business."  

[...]  

Consider the timing. This "proposed guidance"—while technically pending public comment—puts conservative groups on immediate notice that it could be enforced at any moment. It is clearly designed to have a chilling effect on any group gearing up for next year's midterms, just as the first round of targeting was designed to dampen conservative participation in the 2010 and 2012 elections.  

Democrats are daily directing government against their political opponents—via Congress, the SEC, the FEC. Yet IRS Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel wants Americans to think this latest IRS rule is just about providing "clarity." And the White House continues to insist that it was unaware of the previous targeting.  

The political insult is that President Obama is using his new targeting rule to wiggle out of liability for the last round. The same president who in May was "outraged" by the IRS's actions now says it was all just some confusion over tax law (which his new rule fixes). He told Chris Matthews last week that the media had hyped what was a few poor IRS souls in Cincinnati who were "trying to streamline what is a difficult law to interpret . . . And they've got a list, and suddenly everybody's outraged." 

Everybody was outraged to discover the IRS was secretly targeting the president's political opponents. They might be more outraged that the White House is now using the IRS to do the same thing in the brazen light of day.

Ah, the Obama Administration... If it isn't baldly lying and passing unpopular laws to take away your health insurance, if it isn't covering up various blunders that result in multiple deaths (Benghazi, Operation "Fast and Furious"), if it isn't running the American economy into the ground, then its trying to use the federal agencies to attack political opponents.

It is amazing to me how fast and how far the United States has fallen while under Obama's watch.

Oregon Signs up 44 People for ObamaCare... After Spending $300 Million

"Another ObamaCare success! Now wait until 80 million or so lose their insurance next year! Then it'll be a real success!"

Why, that's a little less than $7 million per person. What a bargain! I'm so proud...

From The Washington Examiner article by Philip Klein (via Drudge):

Oregon, once touted as a model for President Obama's health care law, signed up just 44 people for insurance through November, despite spending more than $300 million on its state-based exchange. 

The state’s exchange had the fewest sign-ups in the nation, according to a new report today by the Department of Health and Human Services. 

The weak number of sign-ups undercuts two major defenses of Obamacare from its supporters. 

One defense was that state-based exchanges were performing a lot better than the federal healthcare.gov website servicing 36 states. But Oregon's website problems have forced the state to rely on paper applications to sign up participants.  

Another defense of the Obama administration has attributed the troubled rollout of Obamacare to the obstruction of Republican governors who wanted to see the law fail as well as a lack of funding. 

But Oregon is a Democratic state that embraced Obamacare early and enthusiastically. Its outreach effort, which included a folk-style music video featuring a singer playing an acoustic guitar against a colorful and scenic backdrop [yeah, that was a good one-- not as good as the "brosurance" ads, but still good. A problem that arises is that I don't personally recall seeing the ads anywhere except the internet-- where it was generally made fun of...], had been praised among the law's supporters. 

And the more than $300 million in federal grant money the state received to build and promote its exchange topped all but two other states - the much more populous New York and California.

But on the "plus" side, a lot of people signed up for Medicare. So... uh, congrats!

I've never understood why increasing the numbers of people on welfare is considered to be a success. Seems like a sort of a low bar to me... But, it is, after all, the Age of Obama. It's an era where clearing bars so low that they're laying on the floor by spending hundreds of billions of dollars is celebrated.

U.S. Government Sells Last of GM Shares-- For a Loss of Billions

"Don't thank me all at once. Just fall to your knees in my presence and renounce all others in the name of the Light-bringer."

Oh goody...

From USA Today:

U.S. taxpayers no longer own any of automaker General Motors. The Treasury sold the last of its remaining 31.1 million GM shares today. It started with 500 million shares in 2010. 

The taxpayer loss on the GM bailout is $10.5 billion. The Treasury department said it recovered $39 billion from selling its GM stake, and had put $49.5 billion of taxpayer money directly into the GM bailout.  

The total bailout rises to $51 billion, including another $1.5 billion that Treasury put into programs to keep GM suppliers afloat and to make sure owners' warranties were honored, plus some into the old GMAC finance company that's now known as Ally — separate from a much larger Ally bailout. 

That $1.5 billion didn't go directly to GM, but was spent largely on its behalf.

Billions lost so that GM can resume posting losses and the car maker unions can continue to run up tabs and meddle in politics. What an accomplishment...

Monday Funnies: Raging Rudolph

It's an old Mad TV skit from way back in the '90s (saying that hurts me a little). It's what happens when Martin Scorsese directs a Rankin and Bass stop motion holiday special. Enjoy.

Obama's Horrible New Normal for American Jobs

A pretty damning graphic... Click Pic to Enlarge

Ignore the graphic, we're in the recovery winter. And it was all George Bush's fault anyway...

From AEI's James Pethokoukis (via Instapundit):

If the US labor market were back at pre-Great Recession levels, this would have been a pretty decent employment report. Net new jobs were up 203,000 last month with gains broadly based, bringing lower unemployment and underemployment rates. November also saw a nice bump in hours worked, which when combined with an increase in average hourly earnings, points to “a robust advance in wage income,” according to RDQ Economics. The firm also adds, “The evidence from the labor market shows that the momentum in the economy was sustained through the period of the government shutdown.” Good stuff all. 

But here’s your trouble: 

1. There are still 1.1 million fewer employed Americans today than right before the recession started, despite a potential labor force that’s 14 million larger. And there are 3.6 million fewer full-time workers than back in 2007. 

2. The employment rate, the share of Americans with a job, is 58.6% — exactly where it was in November 2009. 

3. If the labor force participation rate were where it was a year ago, the jobless rate would be 7.9%, not 7% (and 11.3% if the LFPR were at prerecession levels, though closer to 9% if demographics-adjusted). 

4. More than 4 million Americans remain out of work for 27 weeks or longer. 

5. Overall, according to the Hamilton Project Jobs Gap calculator, it will take another five years to return to 2007 employment levels even at the improved job creation pace of the past four months. 

Things could be worse, of course. If not for the Fed’s bond-buying program, tax hike-driven austerity may well have put the economy back into recession in 2013, sending unemployment back toward 10%. (For more: See the euro zone.) Yet the Long Emergency for workers is still in effect — particularly those who are lightly educated –even as inflation remains moribund. Of course this shouldn’t be surprising given an economy that’s growing around 2% right now.

Do you want to bet that we will still have an "unexpectedly" weak retail holiday season?

Pearl Harbor Anniversary

The ships rust and memories fade, but the legacy continues.

Shanghai Smog at Epic Hazard Levels

Yet so many American "progressives" have such an absolute love affair with China. China get things done, invests in infrastructure, bans plastic bags, and stuff... and makes the air harmful for everyone! How fair.

From the AP (via Drudge):

Shanghai authorities ordered schoolchildren indoors and halted all construction Friday as China's financial hub suffered one of its worst bouts of air pollution, bringing visibility down to a few dozen meters, delaying flights and obscuring the city's spectacular skyline.  

The financial district was shrouded in a yellow haze, and noticeably fewer people walked the city's streets. Vehicle traffic also was thinner, as authorities pulled 30 percent of government vehicles from the roads. They also banned fireworks and public sporting events. 

"I feel like I'm living in clouds of smog," said Zheng Qiaoyun, a local resident who kept her 6-month-old son at home. "I have a headache, I'm coughing, and it's hard to breathe on my way to my office." 

Shanghai's concentration of tiny, harmful PM 2.5 particles reached 602.5 micrograms per cubic meter Friday afternoon, an extremely hazardous level that was the highest since the city began recording such data last December. That compares with the World Health Organization's safety guideline of 25 micrograms.  

The dirty air that has gripped Shanghai and its neighboring provinces for days is attributed to coal burning, car exhaust, factory pollution and weather patterns, and is a stark reminder that pollution is a serious challenge in China. Beijing, the capital, has seen extremely heavy smog several times over the past year. In the far northeastern city of Harbin, some monitoring sites reported PM 2.5 rates up to 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter in October, when the winter heating season kicked off. [emphasis mine]

Far be it from me to question China's actions, but banning fireworks doesn't seem like it's quite the answer...

White Students Take a Stand Against Black Professor's Racial Screeds During Class-- Lawsuits Ensue

"This sort of thing should not be happening in my post-racial America. Whites are just supposed to shut up."

Ah, the post-racial America... This sort of nonsense has to take place. Glenn Reynolds commented that he expects that "this sort of thing will become more common." Agreed. But it has to happen to get this sort of racialist nonsense out of the classrooms and back to junk websites like Stormfront and the Kwanzaa sites-- which openly calls for racial warfare-- where it belongs.

From The Daily Caller article by Robby Soave: (via Instapundit):

The trouble began in English professor Shannon Gibney’s Introduction to Mass Communications class at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Though the class ostensibly has little to do with race, Gibney considers herself an activist on racial issues, and frequently invokes white privilege and oppression during class time, according to her students. (She has previously taught classes on race and gender.) 

Recently, several white students announced that they had had enough with Gibney’s incessant racial screed. They interrupted her during a lecture, and said, “Why do we have to talk about this in every class? Why do we have to talk about this?” according to Gibney’s account of the incident, which was recorded by the City College News.  

Gibney felt put on the spot, but told the students not to take matters personally.
“We are not talking about all white people, or you white people in general,” she told them. “We are talking about whiteness as a system of oppression.” 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this failed to provide comfort to the white students. Next, Gibney invited them to file a racial harassment complaint with the college if they were so offended. 

So they did. 

Last week, the college reprimanded Gibney and accused of her creating a hostile work environment for white students.  

[...]  

The college said that it did not reprimand Gibney in the manner she claimed but declined to comment on the matter in general. 

Gibney called MCTC’s investigations into her behavior “attacks on me by white males.”
“As a vocal black female younger looking… faculty member here, unfortunately this is no the first time,” she said. “I’ve actually had multiple verbal and institutional attacks on me by white males, whether they were students, faculty, administration or staff.” 

Gibney and six other MCTC faculty members have filed a class action lawsuit against MCTC that alleges the college is a discriminatory workplace for people of color. 

She did not respond to a request for comment.

Colleges have become something merely to endure simply to get a diploma... and even the diploma is becoming be more and more useless.

Mid-Week Laughs: YouTube Comments Reconstruction Video #2

I posted the first one on Monday. I thought this one was pretty funny too, so here you go. And this one is also NSFW due to language.

Enjoy:

Chris Matthews to Interview Obama Thursday

"I have the found the chosen who shall properly supplicate me! All the time with a thrill up his leg..."

I guess Obama needs some reassuring from his one of his most fawning supporters at the most pro-Obama propaganda station...

From Ben Shapiro at Breitbart:

On Thursday, MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who infamously claimed that President Obama gave him a “thrill” up his leg, will be interviewing Obama at American University in Washington, D.C. Obama will also answer questions from the student audience, as well as some questions submitted online. Obama recently held an off-the-record meeting with several MSNBC hosts at the White House in the aftermath of his failing Obamacare rollout.

MSNBC’s website touted: “Obama’s interview with Matthews comes following the rocky rollout of HealthCare.gov, an interim nuclear deal with Iran, renewed calls for immigration reform, and with new budget negotiations on the horizon.” But what will Matthews ask Obama about? “Matthews will discuss a number of topics with Obama, including voter suppression, healthcare, political gridlock in D.C., growing dissatisfaction with the government and more.”

Boy, I can't wait to miss that boot-licking interview.

OFA Organizing Newtown Anniversary Events to Push Gun Control

The Light-bringer's replica will bring safety to us all.

I guess the idea to never let a crisis go to waste includes never stop standing on the backs of dead children to promote an unpopular political agenda.

From Twitchy.com:

Never mind how the families of Newtown, Conn., would prefer to observe the one-year anniversary of the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. Organizing for Action is hijacking Dec. 14 to stage its own “remembrance events” across the nation. 

In an email, OFA promises to give organizers “the resources you need to ensure your event is a powerful reminder of what we lost a year ago, and a reminder that we as a nation need to do more to prevent gun violence and keep our communities safe.” That certainly sounds more like a series of gun control rallies than a solemn remembrance, doesn’t it? If it doesn’t yet, check out the official event description from barackobama.com of the “day of action”:

It has been one year since the tragic events in Newtown, Connecticut, where 26 Americans lost their lives to gun violence. Despite overwhelming public support for expanding background checks for gun sales, Congress has failed to act. Join local supporters as we remember Newtown and ask Congress: What will it take to make our communities safer?

Somebody described the OFA as being "Tragedy pimps."  That sounds about right.

The EPA is Engaging in Backdoor Gun Control According to Allen West

"I shall make all of you pay for ignoring the Light-bringer's will! You will not ignore my political agendas... or else I will execute them by executive fiat!"

There's very little Obama will not try to get his way. Blatant lies, political intimidation, sluffing off blame and responsibility, using the executive branch's alphabet soup of regulatory commissions to bully and intimidate his political opponents, is all in a day's work for this embarrassment of a president.

Gun control unpopular? Fine, create it by executive fiat. He's just that kinda guy.

From AllenWest.com via Breitbart:

I am one who steers very clear of tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. I often believe progressives plant stories in order to distract and disrupt, enabling them to pursue their true goals and objectives. That’s why I stress the importance of staying focused on the modern liberal socialist policies of the Obama administration, not the sideshow antics.  

However, as a former combat commander, I have been trained to look for trends. And I believe we’ve found a very disturbing one. it seems that back door gun control is in full effect in the United States. Why? Thanks to Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), we can no longer smelt lead from ore in the United States. 

The first contact the EPA made with The Doe Run Lead Smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri (population 2,800) was in 2008 but it was in 2010 that the EPA finally forced Doe Run to plan a shut down. This plant has been in operation since 1892 but will finally close its doors this month. It was the last lead smelting plant in the US. 

The closedown is due to new extremely tight air quality restrictions placed on this specific plant. President Obama and his EPA raised the regulations by 10 fold and it would have cost the plant $100 million to comply.  

In response to the Doe Run lead smelter shutdown, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the Doe Run Company “made a business decision” to shut down the smelter instead of installing pollution control technologies needed to reduce sulfur dioxide and lead emissions as required by the Clean Air Act.  

Of course this is why we need serious regulatory reform that precludes executive agency fiat, especially regulation implementation that exceeds a certain adverse financial impact to a private sector business.  

[...]   

What this all means is that after December 2013, any ammunition that will be available to US citizens will have to be imported, which will surely increase the price and possibly come under government control. It seems this is fully in concert with the US Military and Homeland Defense recent purchase of large quantities of ammunition.  

[...]  

So America, back door gun control is moving forward and while we are all distracted with Obamacare and Iran nuclear negotiations, our Second Amendment rights are undergoing an assault by clandestine infiltration. Remember we reported on this website the gun registration actions being undertaken in Washington DC. Barack Obama and his progressive socialist acolytes are quite savvy at political chess. He is seeking to outflank, envelope, and destroy the Second Amendment. Now it’s our move in 2014.

There really is no end to Obama's desire to control the American people. He will not leave you alone, no matter how hard you try to ignore him. His policies, such as ObamaCare, are designed to effect every American citizen against their will. We have to stand firm against him. There's no other way.

Monday Morning Laughs: YouTube Comments Reconstruction

I saw this on Ace of Spades and had to watch it twice because my laughter drowned out parts. Thought I'd share. Oh, the video is NSFW by the way for language.

Enjoy: