President Obama is the worst President in my lifetime.  He has the potential to be the worst President in our nation’s history but he has competition.  But when he’s right he deserves credit.   This also applies to Michelle Obama when she gets something right she also deserves credit.  .

President held a meeting where he talked about growing up without a father and explained that this contributed to him experimenting with drugs and behaving irresponsibly.  It was a brave thing to do.  It was the right thing to do.

The scarcity of positive male role models in the black community is obvious.  We desperately need responsible black males to challenge other black males to act responsibly.  Nothing could have a bigger impact on the rate of poverty and drug abuse rampant in the black community.  There are a lot of things about Obama that I do not like, but he did marry Michelle and he has been a responsible parent.  Now, he is using the bully pulpit to help challenge more black males to choose to be responsible.  Good for him.  Way to go Barack!  I hope a whole lot of people stand up and applaud you for doing this.  I hope even more people follow your example.  When you’re right, you’re right.

Michelle Obama is beyond annoying, but her campaign to make food labels easier to read is just plain common sense.  She is absolutely right in pointing out that labels should make it easy to determine what matters.  I have tried to become more consistent in reading food labels and they are terrible.  The print is very small and there is tons of information that really doesn’t matter to me.  All I really want to know is the amount of Calories and the number of Carbs.  Michelle Obama is promoting an FDA regulation required food labels to display the number of calories is in bold print and in big print.  That is a brilliant idea that is long overdue.  Good for you Michelle.

I have not changed my opinion about either Barack Obama or Michele Obama.  The problems with both are all too obvious and all too real.  But we always need to be careful to give credit when credit is due.  Barack Obama is a good role model as a black male parent and he deserves credit for that.  He also is speaking out on the importance of black males being responsible parents and he deserves credit for that too.  Michele Obama has promoted some silly ideas regarding nutrition, including some idiot rules regarding school lunches.  But printing the number of calories in large print is smart, really smart.  And it is a great idea.  Good for her.

TDM

For years we have been reading dire predictions about climate change.  So I thought it would be interesting to go back a few years, read the predictions and see how things turned out.  Following is an article from the Independent.co.uk published in March of 2000:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

The effects of snow-free winter in Britain are already becoming apparent. This year, for the first time ever, Hamleys, Britain’s biggest toyshop, had no sledges on display in its Regent Street store. “It was a bit of a first,” a spokesperson said.

Fen skating, once a popular sport on the fields of East Anglia, now takes place on indoor artificial rinks. Malcolm Robinson, of the Fenland Indoor Speed Skating Club in Peterborough, says they have not skated outside since 1997. “As a boy, I can remember being on ice most winters. Now it’s few and far between,” he said.

Let’s see how that worked out.  Here is a link to the dailymail.co.uk article regarding today’s forecast for London:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096372/UK-weather-forecast-15cm-snow-way-Met-Office-issues-severe-weather-warning.html

Hmmmm.  Much of England under “Level 3” cold weather alert, which warns of ‘100% possibly of severe cold weather, icy conditions and heavy snow.’

This is also happening in parts of the U.S.  Check out the link to the International Business Times article about the weather this winter:

http://www.ibtimes.com/winter-weather-statistics-where-2013-2014-season-stands-so-far-snowfall-totals-temperature-records

Incredibly there are still a lot of people who actually believe the global warming alarmist crowd.  They think those of us who are skeptical are just afraid to acknowledge the science.  The reality is that the nearly all of the science is on the side of the skeptics.  Even the strongest global warming advocates have acknowledged that there has been no significant global warming for at least a decade.  The other day, Bill Nye, the science guy was televised in a mini debate with Representative Marsha Blackburn:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/bill-nye-the-science-guy-confuses-arctic-with-antarctic-at-global-warming-debate/

The Washington Post headline regarding this encounter said:  “Bill Nye Scolds GOP Congresswoman On Global Warming.”

The question is did the Washington Post write this headline because they didn’t bother to watch the show, or did they write this headline because they chose to lie about it?

Nye held up a chart of the Arctic and tried to claim that it showed how much ice is missing in the Antarctic.  There is a good reason for that.  An actual chart of Antarctic would show more ice.  Like about 25% more ice.  If we truly had global warming, wouldn’t it be “global?”

You can learn everything you need to know about the science by reading what both people had to say:

The actual statements by both were as follows:

Marsha Blackburn:

“Neither (Bill) nor I are climate scientists. He is an engineer and an actor, I am a member of Congress. And what we have to do is look at the information that we get from climate scientists,”

Bill Nye:

“We have overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing. That you cannot tie any one event to that is not the same as doubt about the whole thing,” said Nye. “There is no debate in the scientific community. I encourage the congresswoman to really look at the facts. You are our leader. We need you to change things, not deny what’s happening.”

Ms. Blackburn is more than willing to evaluate the science.  Mr. Nye is only interested in silencing critics.  My response is:   Mr. Nye, if you have so much overwhelming evidence, why did you have to use a chart from the wrong pole?

The global warming crowd is screaming at the top of their lungs in a desperate attempt to drown out the sad reality that they are holding up the wrong charts.

TDM

Several years ago I was at a dinner meeting with more than a few liberals.  The subject came up about women in the workplace.  I made the comment that not all woman dreamed of working outside the home and that I personally knew women whose dream job was to be a house wife and a stay at home mom.  Some of these liberals became very angry and said that this was absurd.  They couldn’t even imagine how any intelligent woman would feel that way.  That is one of the biggest problems for liberals.  They often can’t even fathom how someone could disagree with them.

The real war on women has been waged primarily by women.  The following chart shows exactly what the feminist agenda has accomplished:

I don’t really see how this trend is benefiting women.  There is no question that more women are working.  There certainly are more options for a woman who doesn’t dream of being a stay at home mom.   But there are also a lot of women working full time while trying to manage a single parent household.

There was a time when men quickly learned that there were two kinds of women.  The kind you married and the kind you didn’t.  There were “good girls”  and “bad girls” and men treated them very differently.   Bad girls might appear to have more fun, for a while, but history taught us that in most cases things didn’t end up all that well for the bad girls.

The feminist movement wants a world where every girl can be a bad girl with no consequences.  That is why Sandra Fluke is a heroine for demanding free contraception so she will have no restraints on promiscuous behavior.  That is also why the feminist movement is so pro-choice.  Abortion frees a woman from the responsibility of bearing a child.

The rarest thing in the movies or on television is a girl saving herself for marriage.  A girl like that is portrayed as hopelessly naïve.  Girls can now be just as sexually irresponsible as men, with no consequences.   This is great, for the guys.  But, I have to wonder if it is all that great for the girls.

A woman today is nearly 4 times more likely to find herself the primary source of income while trying to raise a family.  She is over 3 times more likely to end up raising the children alone.   The numbers are much worse for many minorities.   Congratulations feminists, you have really helped women on the path to a happier life.

Suppose that men started treating women the way it used to be?  Just think how terrible this would be for women.  Fewer women would learn the joy of being a single parent.  More men and women would sacrifice excitement for the dullness of being merely being responsible parents.  Fewer children would have the opportunity to watch their parents split up.  More women would be stuck with the terrible prospect of being a stay at home mom.  Why we might even go back to a time when a vast majority of men felt an obligation to provide for their family.   How very demeaning to women.

TDM

The debt ceiling was raised with no spending cuts.  There were only 27 Republicans who voted for that in the House and no Republicans who voted for it in the Senate.  The Republicans lost this battle, but they didn’t necessarily lose the war.

Let’s take a closer look at what was lost and what was gained.  Democrats wanted Republicans to vote against the debt ceiling so they could blame them for shutting down the government.  They did not even attempt to negotiate in good faith.  The main stream media would have hammered Republicans for shutting down the government without regard to the actual facts.  For better or worse, Democrats “own” the debt ceiling just like they own ObamaCare.  If you check out the opinion polls, raising the debt ceiling is not really that popular.

I think Democrats may have made a huge mistake.  How are they going to spin this when running for re-election?   Republicans have stockpiles of video, including clips from Obama, saying that raising the debt ceiling is irresponsible.  Even the main stream media can’t blame Republicans on this one.

The debt ceiling was going to be raised anyway.  Republicans would have caved.  They just would have incurred a lot of casualties in a failed effort.  I would have preferred that they put up a fight, but only if they were prepared to stay the course until they won.  With the current Republican leadership that was highly unlikely.

I think this will really hurt both Boehner and McConnell.  But I also think this may be a huge problem for Democrats in 2014.  They were already in trouble because of ObamaCare.  It is going to be very difficult for Democrats to explain voting to increase the debt ceiling, again, without cutting anything and this time they can’t even blame Republicans.

TDM

NOTE: Kevin Faulconer, Republican was elected Mayor of San Diego.  He now becomes the ONLY Republican Mayor of a major city.  Just last Sunday political polls showed this race to be very close.  The Democratic Party put in the typical last minute get out the vote drive, fueled with union money, and they expected to win. It didn’t work.  It wasn’t even close.  In addition, the voter turnout was actually higher than it was during the November election.  If this is a trend of things to come, 2014 is going to be a very bad year for Democrats.

According to Drudge today, the NSA has been providing targets for all those drone strikes so highly praised by the Obama administration.   Following is a link to an article in The Intercept:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/

According to this source, if the NSA identifies a target phone, they just wait for the phone/sim card to show up on the GPS and its bombs away.  There doesn’t appear to be any requirement for confirmation that the actual person targeted has the phone.  Even if they have the right person, apparently they don’t worry much about collateral damage.

It is unclear where or when this started.  President Bush definitely ordered drone attacks, but he appeared to have focused on al Qaeda leaders.  President Obama expanded the program and used it to kill a lot of lower level combatants.  He even bragged about it.  The following report from CNN in 2012 explains this in detail:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/opinion/bergen-obama-drone/

When you combine the willingness to kill almost anyone with the targeting of people based solely on the location of a cell phone it paints a very ugly picture.  This is particularly true when our troops in Afghanistan have highly restricted rules of engagement specifically designed to avoid civilian casualties, even if it puts our own troops in jeopardy.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/26/rules-of-engagement-bind-us-troops-actions-in-afgh/?page=all

I don’t see how anyone can justify this.  This borders on insanity.  It sure looks like President Obama was lying, again.  Here is what he said last May:

 “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.”   

“by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”

His statement that drones are only used where there is “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured” is absurd.  There is no possibility that this is accurate.  It is even less true than the crap about how you can keep your current health plan and you can keep your current doctor.  Only this time the phrase “Obama lied, people died” is all too accurate.

One has to wonder how bad it has to get before the main stream media becomes concerned.  If there had been a hint that George W. Bush was ordering drones to kill people solely because they were holding the wrong cell phone the main stream media would have gone postal.  They would have been justified to do so.  They went nuts because he was listening to people who were calling known terrorist associates overseas.  We already know that being a liberal Democrat justifies a President lying under oath.  We know that being a liberal Democrat justifies a President lying to the American people and arbritarily changing the law.  Now are we to assume that being a liberal Democrat justifies a President ordering numerous assassinations without even bothering to find out if we are getting the right guy?  Liberals must be very proud.

TDM

Some of you are probably wondering how the unemployment rate continues to drop when the economy is clearly not adding enough jobs and fewer people are actually working.  The answer is really quite simple.  It all depends on how you keep score.

I am a San Francisco Giants fan, so I adopted this formula to help insure that the Giants win the National League West this season.  It is really simple and easy to understand.

Any inning where outside influences unfairly affect the outcome must be discarded.  That is only fair.  Let me explain.  Supposed the dreaded Los Angeles Dodgers score 5 runs in the first inning.  The Giants do not score any runs.  During the second inning the Giants score 2 runs and the Dodgers are held scoreless.  The Dodger runs from the first inning are discarded under the formula, because the Giants were tired after flying back home from the East Coast.  The Dodgers only had to travel from San Diego, giving them an unfair advantage.  The only rational thing to do here is to ignore the first inning, so that the score is more reflective of actual performance.  Once we eliminate the unfair inning, we get a much better measurement of results.  Thus while some naïve people who do not understand the scoring rule might foolishly think the Dodgers are ahead 5 – 2, in reality the Giants are ahead 2 – 0.

These kinds of adjustments continue throughout the game.  After all, what is fair in the first inning is fair throughout the rest of the game.  Some incredibly naïve and biased folks may complain that only innings where the Dodgers score are ignored under this system, but that is unfair.  San Francisco is more accepting of gay people than Los Angeles, so any criticism of this system is clearly the direct result of anti-gay prejudice.   It is totally unfair to criticize San Francisco just because the city is more tolerant.

With this minor change in scoring the Giants are destined to go from last place in the National League West to winning the pennant by a large margin.  It is only fair, because the Giants players are working really hard and they deserve to be considered winners.  In addition, we all benefit from living in a society free from prejudice.

I would like to take credit for creating this approach but in reality I borrowed the concept from the Obama administration.  This new and better system is remarkably similar to the way the Obama administration measures unemployment.

TDM

For years the liberal left has been rewarded for irresponsible behavior.  When is the last time you heard a liberal Democrat talk about widening the party tent?   The liberal left wing of the Democratic Party is totally in control.   They are not interested in appealing to people with different ideas; their goal is to silence anyone who dares have a different idea.

It is almost impossible for a moderate Democrat to win a primary election in most states.   What do you think would happen to a Democrat running in a primary election who said he or she was open-minded about abortion or gay marriage?  Negotiating with the liberal left is like playing chicken with a suicidal maniac.  In a game of chicken the most responsible person always loses.

There are only two solutions to this kind of problem.  One is that some competent authority steps in and punishes irresponsible behavior.  In a perfect world, that would be the main stream media.  But in the United States the main stream media is far too biased to do that.  In a lot of cases the main stream media is the problem.

That leaves the second alternative where responsible people become outraged and start demanding action.   There are signs that this is starting to happen.

First there was the backlash against the Duck Dynasty witch hunt.  People not only stood up for the Ducks, they made it clear that they are tired of this crap and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

Now we have the backlash regarding immigration reform.  John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan were going to try and slip immigration reform by what they considered to be the naïve Tea Party coalition.  They bought into the Democratic lie that Republicans will be punished if they don’t bend over and allow Democrats to pass immigration reform.  That is utter nonsense.  If immigration reform had passed, Republicans would have gotten none of the credit and there would have been an immediate influx of new and excited Democrats.

The good news is that the Republican establishment is no longer operating under the illusion that the Tea Party was just a bunch of “B” rated politicians out of touch with polite society.  There is no “Tea Party.”  There is just a whole lot of people sick and tired of left wing radical Democrats enabled by the spineless Republican establishment.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/7/backlash-immigration-plan-floods-boehner-website/

The Republican establishment is starting to fear its’ base more than they fear the liberal left and the main stream media.  That is a very good thing.

TDM

On Thursday, August 14, 2003 I was at JFK airport in New York City, trying to catch the last plane leaving for the West Coast.  I almost made it.  I was on the jet way getting ready to enter the plane when the power went out.  We were ordered back into the terminal.  At first it didn’t look that bad.  But it was bad.  I ended up camping out in the baggage claim area for a couple of days.  Then the toilets started to back up.  Finally, in desperation some of us pooled resources and bribed a passenger van to take us to Philadelphia.  Unfortunately many people spent the weekend waiting to get out of JFK.

A lot has changed since 2003, but if anything our dependence on our power system has increased.  I am sure a lot has been done to correct the problems that caused the 2003 blackout, but fear another major event is all too likely.  A recent news report confirms that fear.  Last April there was an alleged terrorist attack on a PG&E site in San Jose:

http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25072628/attack-pg-e-substation-sparks-concerns-about-possible

Few people noticed because the FBI is still claiming that no terrorism was involved.  But the FBI probably doesn’t believe there was terrorism involved in Benghazi either and it sees no evidence of IRS corruption.  Sadly the FBI has lost most of its credibility.

Jon Wellinghoff, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, says that he believe this was an act of domestic terrorism.  He has an argument.  There were more than 100 shell casings found at the scene, none of which had finger prints.  Someone lifted the lid to an underground vault and severed six fiber optic cables.  The weapons involved were AK-47’s and the facility may have been marked with small rock piles to help the snipers find the right targets.  While this is not exactly proof that al Qaeda was involved it is evidence that someone worked hard to plan this little adventure.

The good news is that even Democrats are paying attention.  Henry Waxman said this incident makes it clear our electric grid is not adequately protected.   I am relatively sure that the administration did not report this as a terrorist attack because they refuse to admit anything is a terrorist attack.  The theory is that if they call it something else, it isn’t really terrorism.  The good news is that it does appear as though the power industry is taking this seriously and is working to beef up security.

There is more to the story.  The perfect time for such an attack would be when alternative power sources are reduced.  Say for example when there is a major drought in California reducing the availability of hydroelectric power.  Or say when a cold wave in the Midwest diverts natural gas from California power plants .  Sound familiar?

I am certainly not predicting an attack.  Terrorists are not stupid and they usually attack when it is least expected.  If anything releasing this story now reduces the potential for an attack.  That is probably why these people went public with the information.  As for me, it is probably time to get around to fixing my backup generator.

TDM

The liberal left is desperately trying to get immigration reform passed.  The latest effort was the recent poll by CNN claiming to show that Americans are totally for legalizing illegal immigrants.  I looked at the poll and it is another example of a liberal push poll guaranteed to deliver the desired results.  Here is the first question:

“What should be the main focus of the U.S. government in dealing with the issue of illegal immigration: developing a plan that would allow illegal immigrants who have jobs to become legal U.S. residents, or developing a plan for stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. and for deporting those already here?”

Note that the choice is between letting people who have jobs stay and trying to deport 11 million people.

The second question was similar:

“Here are some questions about how the U.S. government should treat illegal immigrants who have been in this country for a number of years, hold a job, speak English and are willing to pay any back taxes that they owe.

“Would you favor or oppose a bill that allowed those immigrants to stay in this country rather than being deported and eventually allow them to apply for U.S. citizenship?”

Most of us don’t have much of an issue will illegal alients who meet this criteria.  The problem is that a whole lot of them don’t come close to meeting this critieria.

How about this for a question:

Do you think we should slow down the inflow of illegal immigrants before we start passing laws that will encourage even more people to come here illegally?

I bet the vast majority of people would agree with that one.

In spite of CNN’s best spin efforts, immigration reform is unlikely to pass for one simple reason.  No Republican in his or her right mind would trust President Obama to keep his part of the bargain.  No matter what Democrats promise, in reality Obama will just ignore the law and do what he wants.

TDM

The IRS scandal is now perilously close to the President because of the O’Reilly interview.  Up until now, President Obama successfully distanced himself from the scandal.  Regardless of who was involved there was no evidence that he was in the loop.  But in his angry response to Bill O’Reilly, President Obama just may have provided direct evidence of his personal involvement.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/02/transcript-bill-oreilly-interviews-president-obama/

President Obama confirmed that Douglas Shulman, former head of the IRS, visited the White House 157 times.

Obama went into detail explaining why Shulman was visiting the White House using the word “we” frequently.  Then O’Reilly asked if Obama specifically talked to Shulman: Following is the response by Obama:

I do not recall meeting with him in any of these meetings that are pretty routine meetings that we had.

That is a classic non-denial denial.  Any trained reporter or prosecutor will recognize that.  Obama did not say that there was no meeting between him and Shulman.  He also didn’t say the IRS targeting of conservatives was never mentioned.  Instead he said he did not recall meeting with Schulman and then admitted such meeting were routine.  Wow!

Obama tried to blame the whole IRS scandal on Fox News.  Then he incredibly claimed that there wasn’t even a smidgen of corruption.  For one thing that is ridiculous because Lois Lerner pled the 5^th Amendment to avoid testifying.  But a more important question is how could Obama know there was no corruption if he was not personally familiar with the internal IRS investigation?  If the IRS investigation is a sham, as was alleged in testimony today, then Obama may have admitted having knowledge of a cover-up.

I do not know if Republicans have the stomach to pursue this.  If a select committee and/or a special prosecutor is appointed than this could become very serious.  Obama should have been prepared for this interview.  He should have said that he would await the results of the internal investigation along with everyone else.  But his anger and arrogance over powered his judgment.

It is impossible to predict growth of a spine by a congress that has yet to show evidence of such.  But in testimony today it became clear that the IRS continues to target conservative opponents and plans to continue doing that in the future.   At some point even the cowardly lions in the Republican establishment may be shamed into taking action.  If they do, at a minimum, Obama has come perilously close to bringing this scandal into the oval office.

TDM