Americans are drowning in Obama's GDP toilet and all Republicans can say this weekend is . . .

Comment of the day: "I'm sick of hearing about Greece . . . Greece is a country that peaked in 450 BC"

Larry Kudlow, today on his show on WABC Radio.

A jury could indict a ham sandwich

OK, two ham sandwiches.

The guy was being blackmailed for crying out loud.

Smells just like how Obama got the courts to discredit his Democrat and Republican opponents in his race for the US Senate.

Lefty "Hope" artist says Obama hasn't come close to living up to his promise

What promise?

He did promise transformation. You just didn't know he meant from rich to poor. Stupid Trotskyite.

Delusional Rand Paul might as well run as a Democrat, blames Republicans for creating ISIS

Rand Paul, quoted here:

"ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS. These hawks also wanted to bomb Assad, which would have made ISIS’ job even easier. They created these people."

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ISIS wouldn't exist if Obama hadn't pulled out of Iraq, had not opposed Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria and the state of Israel, and let ISIS' leader out of Camp Bucca.

Hysterical Glenn Beck makes hysterical liberals, well, hysterical

It's hard to keep all the hysteria separate at The Daily Beast, where libertarian hysteria meets liberal hysteria and proves what we knew all along: hysteria is a defining feature of both liberalism and libertarianism.

Glenn Beck:

'“I would open it up to all drugs [potentially being legalized],” and leave it up to the states.'

The Daily Beast:

'In Beck’s telling, the main consequence of this police escalation and the war on drugs was not the mass incarceration of millions . . .."

The one exaggerates what society can stand, the other what it can't.

Beer, wine and liquor have a long record of being more or less controllable while opiates do not. No one with much experience of the latter is clamoring for their wider use.

On the other side 2.3 million adult incarcerates barely qualifies as millions in a society of 321 million people. The only people demanding the release of the duly captive are Democrats and other racists.

Blame the libertarians for handing Romney his loss in 2012, not conservatives

Third parties bled away over 60% of the few votes Romney lost by in his failed eastern strategy in Election 2012.

Mitt Romney's bid to win the White House failed by 64 electoral college votes, all of which he narrowly lost in an eastern strategy in just four states by a total of only 429,522 popular votes:

Florida, lost by 74,309 votes, where third parties garnered an unbelievable 90,972 votes;

Virginia, lost by 149,298 votes, where third parties garnered 60,147 votes;

Ohio, lost by 166,272 votes, where third parties took a whopping 101,788 votes;

and New Hampshire, lost by 39,643 votes, where third parties took 11,493 votes.

That's a loss for Romney of 64 electoral college votes, enough to have taken him from 206 to 270 to take the presidency, losing 429,522 total popular votes in just four states where third parties all told took 264,400 votes, 61.5% of the total needed by Romney to win.

This isn't to say that those were all necessarily Republican votes which went third party, but fully 50.5% of the 264,400 were cast for the libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson of New Mexico, who had been a Republican candidate for president until late 2011 when he was excluded from the Republican debates. At that point he bolted to the Libertarian Party, and openly stated his intention to play a spoiler role:

“I hope that I would get labeled as a ‘spoiler’ from the standpoint of people actually focusing on what it is I am saying, and that this changes the way whoever wins governs,” Johnson told Sunshine State News in an exclusive interview Saturday at the 2012 Ron Paul Festival.

Combine the pique factor around that with the natural alienation felt by libertarians toward a Mormon candidate who was himself socially conservative in his habits and loathe to exercise himself on behalf of libertarians' usual limited government ideas and you can make a case that it was libertarians who cost Romney the election, by casting spoiler votes, staying away from the polls entirely, or even voting for Obama out of spite.

This is a better explanation for the Romney loss than some mythical 4 million conservatives staying away from the polls in 2012 as Rush Limbaugh keeps saying. The numbers themselves disprove that, as Romney garnered 1 million more votes in 2012 than McCain in 2008. It was a much closer election than the (mostly libertarian) punditocracy wants you to know.

Conservatives, most of whom are Christians, aren't put off by abstainers like Mitt Romney the way libertarians might be (many Christians are abstemious too), and Christians find it much more morally problematic to stay away from the polls, or to vote out of spite, in a way which libertarians would not. Christian voters are nothing if not preoccupied with their moral and social responsibility, but libertarians care little for that.

In fact, withdrawing from social responsibilities is elevated to the level of a moral principle by libertarians. Staying away from the polls is a John Galt tactic straight out of the playbook from Ayn Rand. It's an ongoing and adolescent fantasy of theirs. It's not a Christian tactic, which is to say it's not a conservative tactic. Conservatives love their country too much to let it go down the drain, and they actively admired Mitt Romney for his commitment to and long record of public service even if his religion and social policy positions bothered them.

It remains a question if Republicans can expect to succeed in future with a brood of vipers in their party such as the libertarians. Republicans should reconsider their tilt toward libertarianism and seriously ask themselves whether things might not go better for them if they more actively pursued the social conservative vote. From the Christians Republicans can expect forgiveness, but from the libertarians only vindictiveness. Isn't that how the Bushes got elected after turning their backs on the Reagan revolution? Isn't that the conceit of moderate Republican presidential aspirants still today?

Why isn't that an easy call? After all, the libertarian Ron Paul who bitterly lost to Romney in the Republican primaries never left the Republican Party, but he never endorsed Mitt Romney either: "I don’t fully endorse him for president,” he said, as late as August 2012, less than three months before the election. Message to libertarians: good ahead, stay home, see if I care.

Call it an ironic payback to Romney, whose moderate Republican father likewise wouldn't endorse the conservative Barry Goldwater after losing to him in 1964, but it's also another sign in a long list of signs that libertarians have more in common with liberals than with conservatives.

They're content if they too can defeat Republicans.

What a shock: Now beholden to Amazon, WaPo approves of Senate's TPP vote

Here:

This action is a great victory for the president, who aggressively lobbied wavering members of his party, and for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who piloted the measure past every last-minute obstacle its opponents threw up.

This bipartisan vote was also, we’re obliged to say, a victory for truth. 

Libertarian anarchist Murray Rothbard ripped off Christian idealist G. K. Chesterton

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

-- G. K. Chesterton, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD? (1910)

“Liberty has never been fully tried in the modern world."

-- Murray Rothbard, FOR A NEW LIBERTY (1973)

Top 47 organization contributors in politics, mostly unions, gave $2.4 billion and 75% of that to Democrats

The Kochs come in 48th, giving just $27 million to Republicans.

When it comes to money in politics from organizations as opposed to individuals, Democrats easily get the majority of it . . . mostly from the unions both public and private. Almost all the top 20 contributors to Democrats are unions, contributing $1.4 billion total with unions accounting for $1 billion of that. The top 20 contributors to Republicans can't even crack the $600 million level.

Open Secrets has the data, here.

Americans are gay propaganda victims, overestimating LGBT population by at least six times

Gallup reports here:

"The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian, little changed from Americans' 25% estimate in 2011, and only slightly higher than separate 2002 estimates of the gay and lesbian population. These estimates are many times higher than the 3.8% of the adult population who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Gallup Daily tracking in the first four months of this year."

Liberals caught lying again: SSM study published in SCIENCE was faked

From the story here, which just shows that "co-authorship" is often simply designed to lend authority to the findings and is specious because the co-author really isn't contributing anything meaningful and is never intended to:

The study’s co-author [Donald P. Green], an esteemed Columbia University political science professor, asked the journal Science to retract the groundbreaking paper, saying he was deeply embarrassed by the incident. ... “Michael LaCour’s failure to produce the raw data coupled with the other concerns noted above undermines the credibility of the findings,” he wrote. “I am deeply embarrassed by this turn of events and apologize to the editors, reviewers and readers of Science.”

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Green got just what he deserved. The practitioners of "science" aren't worthy of the name.

48 Senate Republicans and 14 Democrats give Obama trade power and sell-out American workers

Why are our enemies on the left our friends?

The roll call vote is here, at 8:51pm on the Friday night before a holiday weekend just to make doubly sure you weren't paying attention. But of course you're too poor to pay attention anyway.

The handful of Republicans who did the right thing include Susan Collins, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby. Mike Enzi didn't vote. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio notably voted Yea, along with a bunch of freshmen who have dutifully fallen in line with the establishment.

Story here.

The bill doesn't go to the president for signature unless the House passes the measure. Fortunately it is on vacation this weekend.

On Memorial Day we honor the memory of the war dead, but who will honor the walking dead of America's Zombie working class?

US Supreme Court's brains mysteriously found on a street in upstate New York

Story here:

GOUVERNEUR, N.Y. -- Nine brains inexplicably appeared earlier this week along a street in a St. Lawrence County village. How the brains got there and where they came from remains a mystery. Residents discovered the brains on Beckwith Street near railroad tracks and called the police.

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At least someone in this country still has the presence of mind.

Kathy Shaidle is wonderfully quotable yet again

While discussing the purely accidental discovery of a real traitor, here:

"Conspiracy theories are History for stupid people."

It doesn't get much better than that.

She doesn't get out much, but it obviously helps. 



Drudge's headline writer has homo on the brain

Obama's winter GDP isn't a victim of bad BEA methodology, it's just UNUSUALLY bad

CNBC and Obama's other excuse makers in the media don't want you to focus on how unusually bad Obama's winter GDP has been.

The fact is nominal GDP over the 69 winters from 1947 has improved from 4Q to 1Q on average by 1.77%. That includes every recession year, and Obama's entire record to date which pulls down the average. Pulling Obama's record out lifts the average to 1.94%.

Obama's record over the 7 winters from 2009 has averaged just 0.24%.

Whatever may be said about the existence of methodological problems with BEA's seasonal adjustments and the lack of transparency involved with its raw data, the point is those problems have persisted over time and infect the whole record. They aren't new to the Obama era. What is new is how CNBC and The New York Times have offered up this red herring this spring since it became clear the 2015 winter was nowhere near as bad as the last one and couldn't be plausibly blamed for the 1Q2015 GDP disaster.

Traditionally the BEA is always involved in revising its reporting based on better information and methods. That's the whole point of the comprehensive revisions published every five years in the summer (one of which we just had in 2013) and of the annual revisions every summer. BEA's decision to revise the Obama record and going back only to 2012 in the upcoming summer 2015 annual revision looks as unusual as Obama's GDP record itself, and smacks of pure politics. If the BEA had any integrity it would follow its normal process.

It is a complete red herring to focus on those problems as if they can in any way excuse Obama's awful record.

The political hacks who never stopped telling you how bad the economy was under George W. Bush aren't telling you now that Bush's winter GDP averaged 1.15%, almost five times better than under Obama.

We should be so lucky to have George Bush's rotten economy today instead of Barack Obama's.

State budget funding gaps and low reserves are the evidence of the nation's growing poverty under Obama

Like the people in general who have experienced their median annual household income fall below 2000, 2007 and 2009 levels, the majority of states now have less to spend in real terms as tax revenues decline and have less in reserve for a crisis, having plundered their savings to make up for the shortfalls.

Bloomberg reports here:

Thirty-two states faced budget gaps in fiscal 2015 or 2016 or both, according to an April 27 report by Standard & Poors. The fiscal year ends June 30 in all but four states. ... State governments have about half the reserves that they had before the recession, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. ... A dozen states still haven’t recovered all jobs lost since the start of the downturn in December 2007 . . . Aggregate general-fund revenue and spending haven’t rebounded to inflation-adjusted fiscal 2008 levels, according to a survey by the State Budget Officers released in December. Revenue of $748 billion for fiscal 2015 would have to be $15 billion higher to match real 2008 levels, the group said.

Libertarianism in Michigan now means smokers and drinkers pay 111% more in taxes than businesses

A fine how-do-you-do from the ménage à trois between Republican libertarianism, Democrat liberalism and the dry Dutch.

The Detroit News reports here:

Revenue from so-called sin taxes on tobacco, beer, wine and liquor totaled $290.5 million in the 2014 fiscal year, more than twice the $137.6 million net income taxes paid by Michigan businesses after receiving $768.8 million in refunds from tax credits, a Detroit News analysis of tax data shows.

Since Gov. Rick Snyder and lawmakers delivered sweeping tax relief for businesses in 2011, net business income taxes dropped 90 percent, depleting the state's main operating fund of $1.33 billion, according to state revenue data.

The percentage of general fund revenue from business income taxes also has plunged as tax credit payouts to companies have soared. Tax data show business income tax receipts declined from 21 percent of the general fund revenue a decade ago to about 2 percent last year. ... Last year, the balance of business income taxes as a share of general revenue began to turn when companies holding tax credits triggered a surge in refunds, from $75.8 million in 2013 to $723.3 million in 2014. The Democratic administration of former Gov. Jennifer Granholm was responsible for most of the state's surge in handing out tax credits to businesses.

Crazed libertarian pledges allegiance to liberty for all, but wants tobacco outlawed

Broadcaster Steve Gruber, here and here:

"I am writing this column to outline one of my more controversial positions. It is time to outlaw smoking altogether. In fact it is time to ban tobacco for any recreational purposes. The kinds of death linked to tobacco from lung cancer, bladder cancer, emphysema, COPD and a host of other horrible diseases need to be stopped."

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Glad you quit again though, Steve. And best of luck to you this time.

Milestones in the growth of the federal regulatory state

• 1950: Code of Federal Regulations, 13 volumes
• 1970: 73 volumes
• 1990: 170 volumes
• 2013: 235 volumes

From an interesting presentation, here, asserting the existence today of over 1 million specific restrictions in the code.

Reuters lies about the fall of Ramadi: Obama isn't "pounding" ISIS from the air

Ramadi has fallen to ISIS because Obama is sitting on his hands, not as reported here:

The United States and its allies have been pounding the militants for months with air strikes in both countries. Washington said on Saturday its special forces had killed a senior IS figure in a raid into Syria.

Over a period of 24 hours up to 0500 GMT on Sunday, the U.S.-led coalition carried out seven air strikes near Ramadi, according to a statement - the highest number on any single location in Iraq and Syria.

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Here's what "pounding" really looks like:

Combat operations began the next day [March 20, 2003] and the USAF participated in air strikes on key targets in and around Baghdad, launching more than 1,700 coalition air sorties and missile launches against Iraq. ... Coalition Air Forces flew nearly 1,000 Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) sorties during the initial weeks of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, collecting 42,000 battlefield images and more than 3,000 hours of full motion video. As of April 30, 2003, coalition air forces numbered 1,801 aircraft, 863 of which were U.S. Air Force fighters, bombers, tankers, special operations and rescue aircraft, transport aircraft, and ISR and command and control aircraft. In the first six weeks, coalition air forces flew more than 41,000 sorties and the USAF accounted for more than 24,000 of the total. Likewise, Air Force C-130 aircraft transported over 12,000 short tons of materiel during the initial stages of the operation, while Air Force tankers flew more than 6,000 sorties and disbursed more than 376 million pounds of fuel.

The US winter of 2015 was not severe by any measure, so its unremarkable cold and snow can't be blamed for poor GDP

Snow cover averaged 1.19% below the baseline since 1967 for the first quarter.

For average temperature the first quarter ranked 95th warmest out of 121 years, 5.6% above the baseline.

For minimum temperature it ranked 96th, 6.7% above the baseline.

For heating degree days it ranked 75th, just 2.3% colder than the average. By contrast 1Q2014 was 6.8% colder than the average, and the 18th coldest by this measure since 1895.

For cooling degree days, a measure of uncomfortable warmth, 1Q2015 ranked tied for 12th warmest winter at 40% above the baseline. 1Q2012 was the warmest in the series at 136% above the baseline.

Better to blame the languid GDP on the heat than the cold.

Vox details the Hillary triple players who didn't just lobby or donate to her foundation, but also enriched her and Bill personally

Here:

The latest episode in the Clinton money saga is different than the others because it involves the clear, direct personal enrichment of Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, by people who have a lot of money at stake in the outcome of government decisions. ... Together, Hillary and Bill Clinton cleared $25 million on the lecture circuit over the last 16 months, according to a Hillary Clinton's personal financial disclosure required of presidential candidates. ... Corning's in good company in padding the Clinton family bank account after lobbying the State Department and donating to the foundation. Qualcomm and salesforce.com did that, too. ... And Microsoft, the American Institute of Architects, AT&T, SAP America, Oracle and Telefonica all paid Bill Clinton six-figure sums to speak as Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork for her presidential campaign. And that list, which includes Clinton Foundation donors, is hardly the end of it. There's a solid set of companies and associations that had nothing to do with the foundation but lobbied State while Clinton was there and then paid for her to speak to them. Xerox, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, in addition to Corning, all lobbied Clinton's department on trade matters and then invited her to earn an easy check.

Libertarian disunity on display in massive field aspiring to 2016 GOP nomination

14 GOP aspirants to date

Liberals have one serious candidate and a few other aspirants defining their side, but Republicans have twice as many with no clear front runner. This is because Republicanism is now overcome by a libertarianism which by definition is unable to agree about much of anything. It is a shrill and brittle ideology of "freedom from" instead of a more modest philosophical meditation about "freedom for". The latter recognizes that freedom is not an absolute, and is what conservatism is all about, but today you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone talking about that in the Republican Party, much less anywhere else.

7 Democrat aspirants to date

The bad news for graduates: if you follow your passions you'll likely go off the rails

USA Today mediocrity Laura Vanderkam sells the snake oil here:

"[T]he good news is that the economy is evolving in ways that make [following your passion] more practical than your graduation speaker realizes. The key is recognizing two things. First, work and life aren't separate; a career is ideally a way to profitably live out your interests. And second, you don't just want to follow your passion; you also want to rally other people to follow your passion. Doing so is how you will get to do what you love for the rest of your life. Fortunately, building a following is more possible than ever, even for young people, if you play your cards right."

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America didn't become the greatest economic powerhouse in the history of the world because its people followed their passions. Ask the millions who slaved away their lives tilling the soil, mining the coal and driving the trucks. Rather it was relentless commitment to hard work, delaying gratification and saving which formed the basis for the success. As for rallying other people to follow your passion, that is a complete waste of your time. And since time is one of your only advantages relative to everyone else, you ought to concentrate on using it more wisely. It's the greatest leverage you have, next to your energy.

Work. Save. Invest.

Republicans vote "in lock-step" to advance Obama's trade pact in Senate, including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio

Conservatives do not have a single friend in the US Senate, unless you count Cassidy and Sullivan who didn't bother to vote and the Senate's 33 hard left Democrats.

Reuters reports here:

"The about-face came after Democrats won a separate vote on a bill punishing countries that manipulate their currencies to keep their exports cheap, and followed a renewed round of personal lobbying by Obama.

"Thirteen of 44 Democrats joined with Republicans, who voted in lock-step to give backers of the legislation more than the 60 votes needed to proceed in the 100-member Senate."

The Senate Roll Call vote is here: 65-33.

Senate Democrats put Fast Track on the slow track

Story here.

One commenter wonders where are all the media accusing the Democrats of holding the bill hostage.

Heh, heh.

Why we're poorer: America is $10 trillion poorer since 1983 because of libertarian free-trade ideology

That's $10 trillion of GDP we're missing, because net imports are a subtraction from the calculation.

Imagine having an extra $333 billion every year for 30 years: In the last 12 months, GDP is up $670 billion, so we'd have 50% MORE in the last year. Instead we're exporting that GDP to others, building up foreign middle classes at the expense of our own while enriching the few owners at the top in our own country.

Traitors to America they are.

Sixty percent of the states still collect less revenue than before the 2007 recession

From an Associated Press story here:

A majority of states have failed to climb back to their pre-recession status, in terms of tax revenue, financial reserves and employment rates, said Barb Rosewicz, who tracks the fiscal health of states for The Pew Charitable Trusts. ... Nationally, total tax revenue coming to the states has been rising, but the pace has been slow as employment continues to lag pre-recession levels in more than half the states, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew also found that 30 states are collecting less revenue than at their peak.

Why did Senator No Pants Paul vote against subpoenaing a fraudulent congressional application to DC's health exchange?

Maybe there's less to Rand Paul than meets the eye.

The story is unpacked here.

Ted Cruz is showing his true colors supporting the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal

From the story here:

"The issue is shaping up as a major 2016 presidential campaign issue, and Sens. Cruz and Rubio join former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, alongside Democratic Party frontrunner former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as supportive of the deal. Graham, Paul, Dr. Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker haven’t taken positions on the matter yet.

"Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, real estate magnate Donald Trump, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina are all publicly against the deal." 

In defeat Nigel Farage realizes the problem is representation, as the American founding generation understood

Here:

"There is also the question of what is fair and reasonable. For so many millions of voters to have just one representative simply cannot be right – and I believe that whomever is the next Ukip leader has a major campaign to fight on this issue."

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He's referring, of course, to the fact that about 4 million Brits voted for UKIP yesterday but got only 1 MP out of it.

This coming from a country with much better representation than in the United States.

Here we have one representative in our parliament, the US House, for every 737,000 citizens. There they have what amounts to one MP for every 98,000 British citizens. That's seven and a half times better representation in Britain than in the US. Yet Nigel Farage complains.

Well.

The American libertarian P. J. O'Rourke visited South Thanet, evidently twice before the election and didn't find Farage there to interview, and today good ole Nigel is surprised that he lost in his own backyard. All politics is local, as we used to say. You have to work for it. Evidently Nigel Farage didn't work hard enough. 

In the US the people own not one such solitary seat as UKIP now owns in the UK, and never will until representation matters to them again as it did at the American nation's founding.

The system in Britain is more friendly to UKIP than Nigel Farage knows.

Who knew David Cameron is actually Britain's second Jewish PM, after Benjamin Disraeli?

"David Cameron's great-great-grandfather Emile Levita was a German Jewish financier and a direct descendant of Renaissance scholar Elia Levita, the author of Bovo-Bukh, the first secular work ever published in Yiddish. Emile Levita obtained British citizenship in 1871 and was the director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which became Standard Chartered Bank in 1969. Through Levita, Cameron is a descendent of the Levites, who themselves claim to be descended from Moses. His wife, Cameron's great-great-grandmother, was a descendant of the wealthy Danish Jewish Rée family on her father's side."

Michael Savage gets history wrong again: says Ed Miliband would be first Jewish Prime Minister of UK

Today, in the first hour of the show.

Guess he never heard of Benjamin Disraeli.

84% of rich people suffer from wealth-denial and self-identify as middle class

Stephen "I don't feel like a wealthy person" Schwarzman is worth about $10 billion

Reported here:

"Fully 44 percent described themselves as middle class, and 40 percent said they were upper middle class. Only 4 percent described themselves as wealthy or rich, and 5 percent described themselves as upper class. ... Studies show that more than three-quarters of today's millionaires made their money themselves and started out in the middle class or lower. Wealth experts say these self-made millionaires may still see themselves as having middle-class values of hard work, humility and family despite their increased wealth."

Hillary: Fired for being too dishonest to investigate President Nixon

h/t th

Obama's been in charge for going on seven years and complains there aren't enough jobs

Look in the mirror, dumb ass.

Video here:

". . . too many young people don't have hope, they don't see opportunity, there are not enough jobs . . .." 

The Wall Street Journal defends Scott Walker's jobs record, with a backhanded swipe at the end

Here:

"The point is simple: After four years with Mr. Walker, more Wisconsinites are employed. That the state has outdone the nation on key economic indicators and moved ahead in key state rankings shows that his policies are working.

"Anyone looking to knock down the prospects for a Walker presidential bid had better look elsewhere—like, for instance, his recent comments about the economics of immigration. Gov. Walker hasn’t mastered everything about the way employment works, but his performance so far in Wisconsin has been much better than his critics claim."

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Open borders insanity is what really matters to The Wall Street Journal and Scott Walker has sinned against the religion by changing his position.

Bush's GDP in winter was 208% better than Obama's

Bush's nominal GDP record in winter, quarterly change from 4Q to 1Q, recessions excluded, coldest to warmest:

2003: 1.2%

2004: 1.4%

2007: 1.1%

2005: 2.0%

2002: 1.2%

2006: 2.0%

Average: 1.48%

Obama's nominal GDP record in winter, quarterly change from 4Q to 1Q, recessions excluded, coldest to warmest:

2014: -0.2%

2015: 0.1%

2010: 0.8%

2011: 0.1%

2013: 1.0%

2012: 1.1%

Average: 0.48%

Add in the recession winters in 2001, 2008 and 2009 and Bush's average becomes 1.15% in winter, 379% better than Obama's 0.24%.

Grand Rapids, MI, temperature anomaly for 2015 extends to 20.2 degrees F below normal through April

April in Grand Rapids was just 0.3 degrees F below normal, a tenth of a degree warmer than the anomaly for April 2014.

The total anomaly for January through April 2014 was 24.8 degrees F below normal, almost 23% colder than the same period this year.