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Obama, our fearless leader. (See 2 below.)
Today 'Scarlett' Obama will be inaugurated and like Rhett Butler I frankly do not give a damn.
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Like the new bridge at Skidaway, Liberals answers don't measure with facts. (See 3 below.)
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Up, Up and away: "Israeli Air Force documentary
Password to enter and then view is "iaf"
https://vimeo.com/54400569
The password is iaf"
The password is iaf"
I have mentioned in previous memos my father was one of 18 American Jews who formed the Sonneborn Institute. It was named after Rudy Sonneborn, an American Industrialist, who brought these men together from all walks of American life for the purpose of helping prepare the fledgling state of Israel to defend itself once it became such.
My father's mission was to purchase war surplus from various scrap dealers in the southeast and have these purchases shipped to Israel by Shep Broad of Miami (Broad Causeway named after him.) The Lebanese American, and Chairman of United Fruit - Sam Zamurray, assisted the Sonneborn Institute members in obtaining transport ships.
The story of the Sonneborn Institute is told in: "The Pledge by Leonard Slater" and Rudy's nephew, Peter Hermann, is also writing a more accurate and definitive documentary based on all the various papers and documents he was given upon the death of his uncle.
In addition to my father's efforts in purchasing war surplus material he also arranged for an Alabama Christian youth who had been a pilot in WW 2 to go to Israel and join their fledgling air force. If memory serves me correctly he was killed while flying his plane .
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It is no wonder this country is in such a big mess. Our law makers have no idea what they are voting on.
How the Senate Really Works. Unbelievable!! I don't care what
your party is! Every American should see this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGDZOW-brA
How the Senate Really Works. Unbelievable!! I don't care what
your party is! Every American should see this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGDZOW-brA
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1)
Americans Call for Term Limits, End to Electoral College
Virtually no partisan disagreement on these long-discussed constitutional reforms
PRINCETON, NJ -- Even after the 2012 election in which Americans re-elected most of the sitting members of the U.S. House and Senate -- as is typical in national elections -- three-quarters of Americans say that, given the opportunity, they would vote "for" term limits for members of both houses of Congress.
Republicans and independents are slightly more likely than Democrats to favor term limits; nevertheless, the vast majority of all party groups agree on the issue. Further, Gallup finds no generational differences in support for the proposal.
These findings, from Gallup Daily tracking conducted Jan. 8-9, are similar to those from 1994 to 1996 Gallup polls, in which between two-thirds and three-quarters of Americans said they would vote for a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms that members of Congress and the U.S. Senate can serve.
More Than Six in 10 Would Abolish Electoral College
Americans are nearly as open to major electoral reform when it comes to doing away with the Electoral College. Sixty-three percent would abolish this unique, but sometimes controversial, mechanism for electing presidents that was devised by the framers of the Constitution. While constitutional and statutory revisions have been made to the Electoral College since the nation's founding, numerous efforts to abolish it over the last 200+ years have met with little success.
There is even less partisan variation in support for this proposal than there is for term limits, with between 61% and 66% of all major party groups saying they would vote to do away with the Electoral College if they could. Similarly, between 60% and 69% of all major age groups take this position.
Gallup has asked Americans about the Electoral College in a number of ways over the years, and regardless of the precise phrasing, large majorities have always supported doing away with it. That includes 80% support in 1968 and 67% in 1980 with wording similar to what is used today.
Compared with today, support for abolishing it was slightly lower from 2000 through 2011, ranging from 59% to 62%, when using a question that asked Americans if they would rather amend the Constitution so the candidate who wins the most votes nationally wins the election, or keep the current system in which the winner is decided in the Electoral College.
Gallup trends show that Republicans were far less supportive than Democrats of abolishing the Electoral College in late 2000, when Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush had lost the popular vote, but was fighting a legal battle to win Florida and therefore the Electoral College. Since then, however, Republicans have gradually become less protective of the Electoral College, to the point that by 2011, a solid majority of Republicans were in favor of abolishing it.
Bottom Line
Large majorities of Americans are in favor of establishing term limits for members of the U.S. House and Senate, and doing away with the Electoral College. Despite sharp polarization of the parties on many issues in 21st century politics, Republicans and Democrats broadly agree on both longstanding election reform proposals.
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup Daily tracking survey Jan. 8-9, 2013, with a random sample of 1,013 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 500 cellphone respondents and 500 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas by region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cellphone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.
Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, population density, and phone status (cellphone only/landline only/both, cellphone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2012 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
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2)Leader of a Country or a Faction?
2)Leader of a Country or a Faction?
By Clark S. Judge: managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute
In his press conference yesterday, the last before the inauguration, President Obama spoke in a tone remarkable – actually unprecedented -- in the post World War II era, perhaps in the history of the nation. He presented himself as the leader, not of the country, but of a faction.
Again and again, the president wasn’t simply confrontational toward the opposition in Congress but contemptuous. In place of the normal ritual at the beginning of second terms, speaking of going forward together, muting the more divisive rhetoric of the campaign, talking of finding common ground for common purpose with leaders in both houses of Congress (one of which is firmly in the hands of the opposition party), the president took exactly the opposite course.
Several times he repeated a list of those who in his telling would suffer if government spending were cut or we went through a shutdown – children, the elderly, our troops, the list went on. After a point, I wondered if he was going to accuse Republicans of drowning puppies next. He offered no acknowledgement – none – that the GOP leadership has put one offer after another one the table, compromising on key principals of taxes and economic growth, to come to the most recent deal.
Instead, when pressed on his own failure to reach out, to socialize, to take on the simple wooing of legislators that is an essential element of presidential leadership, he offered the gratuitous – and to my knowledge incorrect – observations that many Congressional Republicans are such political cowards that they won’t come to White House cookouts, for fear of a backlash at home.
There is a great deal of talk in the media at the moment about American government being broken. I don’t share that view. We are confronting a major turning point and, as it has historically in all such moments, our political system feels as though it can’t decide to go one way or the other.
In a National Review Online column yesterday (http://tinyurl.com/cbfytfx) Michael Barone addressed national turning points, asking, “Is the Entitlement State Winding Down?” He suggested that our history runs in, as he put it, “the American-sounding interval of 76 years, just a few more than the Biblical lifespan of three score and 10.” Washington’s first inaugural to Lincoln’s second was 76 years, as was that moment to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now are just four years away from the 76 anniversary of the entry into World War II.
Barone suggests that the mark of the present turning point is that the “welfare-state arrangements that once seemed solid are on the path to unsustainability.” If so, many hard negotiations lie ahead. Among the roles of president’s at such moment is seek national unity even as they seek to advance their agenda.
We hear a great deal about Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill. Nothing the current president has faced in terms of opposition attacks compares to what Reagan faced during Iran-Contra. It was clear that the Democrats in Congress wanted to close down the Reagan presidency. During this period, Ted Kennedy and his allies in the Senate, who included the current vice president, launched the first and to date one of two most extreme and personal attacks in American history on a presidential nominee to the Supreme Court (the other being against Clarence Thomas, of course).
Yet it was also in this period, the Reagan and O’Neill launched a major move in support of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets (http://tinyurl.com/a49ogqq). Mr. Reagan saw his third pick for the Court confirmed. Indeed, in the last months of his administration, President Reagan was even able to shame a full set of budget bills out of Congress.
The reason wasn’t that Congressional Democrats then were cooperative in a way that the Congressional Republicans are not now. Instead, they set new standards for venom and partisanship that no fair-minded person could say have been exceeded in our time. Rather, it was that the president worked at transcending divisions.
Reagan exemplified all the qualities of charm and courtesy that Mr. Obama seemed to disparage in his press conference. His humor made him a pleasure for even adversaries to be around. And while it is true, as the current president suggested yesterday, that the ultimate sources of our divisions are substantive, much more can be achieved – and have traditionally been achieved -- when the presidents have worked the room.
The sad fact is that President Obama appears incapable of reaching in any serious way beyond his faction. It is going to be a long four years in Washington
In his press conference yesterday, the last before the inauguration, President Obama spoke in a tone remarkable – actually unprecedented -- in the post World War II era, perhaps in the history of the nation. He presented himself as the leader, not of the country, but of a faction.
Again and again, the president wasn’t simply confrontational toward the opposition in Congress but contemptuous. In place of the normal ritual at the beginning of second terms, speaking of going forward together, muting the more divisive rhetoric of the campaign, talking of finding common ground for common purpose with leaders in both houses of Congress (one of which is firmly in the hands of the opposition party), the president took exactly the opposite course.
Several times he repeated a list of those who in his telling would suffer if government spending were cut or we went through a shutdown – children, the elderly, our troops, the list went on. After a point, I wondered if he was going to accuse Republicans of drowning puppies next. He offered no acknowledgement – none – that the GOP leadership has put one offer after another one the table, compromising on key principals of taxes and economic growth, to come to the most recent deal.
Instead, when pressed on his own failure to reach out, to socialize, to take on the simple wooing of legislators that is an essential element of presidential leadership, he offered the gratuitous – and to my knowledge incorrect – observations that many Congressional Republicans are such political cowards that they won’t come to White House cookouts, for fear of a backlash at home.
There is a great deal of talk in the media at the moment about American government being broken. I don’t share that view. We are confronting a major turning point and, as it has historically in all such moments, our political system feels as though it can’t decide to go one way or the other.
In a National Review Online column yesterday (http://tinyurl.com/cbfytfx) Michael Barone addressed national turning points, asking, “Is the Entitlement State Winding Down?” He suggested that our history runs in, as he put it, “the American-sounding interval of 76 years, just a few more than the Biblical lifespan of three score and 10.” Washington’s first inaugural to Lincoln’s second was 76 years, as was that moment to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now are just four years away from the 76 anniversary of the entry into World War II.
Barone suggests that the mark of the present turning point is that the “welfare-state arrangements that once seemed solid are on the path to unsustainability.” If so, many hard negotiations lie ahead. Among the roles of president’s at such moment is seek national unity even as they seek to advance their agenda.
We hear a great deal about Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill. Nothing the current president has faced in terms of opposition attacks compares to what Reagan faced during Iran-Contra. It was clear that the Democrats in Congress wanted to close down the Reagan presidency. During this period, Ted Kennedy and his allies in the Senate, who included the current vice president, launched the first and to date one of two most extreme and personal attacks in American history on a presidential nominee to the Supreme Court (the other being against Clarence Thomas, of course).
Yet it was also in this period, the Reagan and O’Neill launched a major move in support of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets (http://tinyurl.com/a49ogqq). Mr. Reagan saw his third pick for the Court confirmed. Indeed, in the last months of his administration, President Reagan was even able to shame a full set of budget bills out of Congress.
The reason wasn’t that Congressional Democrats then were cooperative in a way that the Congressional Republicans are not now. Instead, they set new standards for venom and partisanship that no fair-minded person could say have been exceeded in our time. Rather, it was that the president worked at transcending divisions.
Reagan exemplified all the qualities of charm and courtesy that Mr. Obama seemed to disparage in his press conference. His humor made him a pleasure for even adversaries to be around. And while it is true, as the current president suggested yesterday, that the ultimate sources of our divisions are substantive, much more can be achieved – and have traditionally been achieved -- when the presidents have worked the room.
The sad fact is that President Obama appears incapable of reaching in any serious way beyond his faction. It is going to be a long four years in Washington
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3)
Liberals Have All The Answers, But Their Answers Aren't Actually True
Moonbat Exterminator wrote: JR, your assertion that computing a single number for the average temperature of the planet is mathematically impossible is incorrect. It would in fact be a simple, straightforward calculation. In statistics, it's called the mean of sampling means. The weakness of such a statistic is that the enormous variability in the data far exceeds the variability in that number. Even the 90 % confidence interval would be much larger than the variations in that average, making it useless from a practical standpoint. - Al Gore Warming
Dear Moon,
I think we are talking about two different things, but your post actually proves my point.
I live in Colorado where temperatures can vary quite a bit from place to place, even covering only short distances.
I drove about 5 miles yesterday and experienced a temperature difference of about 7 degrees Fahrenheit. And that’s not because of huge altitude differences.
Unless you can account for those differences everywhere, and map them according to the area occupied for each temperature, which you can’t possibly do, there is no real average temperature for the planet. Not one that has any real significance.
The larger point, which I think we both agree on, is that for purposes of global warming, no actual “average” temperature has been calculated that’s meaningful in the debate.
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