Winter 2015 temperatures were above average in the lower 48

The first quarter of 2015 was a lot warmer than last year.

For 2014 minimum temperature January through March ranked 25th going back to 1895, meaning there were 24 winters that had colder minimum temperature, 41st for average temperature, so obviously below normal, and 104th for heating degree days (the coldest year ranked 120th, meaning 2014 was the 16th coldest first quarter since 1895 in terms of the energy needed to keep comfortable).

2015, despite the horror stories heard from places like Boston, was overall much warmer. For minimum temperature the first quarter ranked 96th, for average temperature 98th, and for heating degree days, above average at 75th. An average winter involves 2317 heating degree days. 2015 came in at 2370, not very much higher at all. The worst winter on record was in 1912, with 2761 heating degree days.

Consider yourself armed when the wusses blame the weather for the bad economy.

You know who to blame . . . the gutsy one.

This woman should be deported today

Story here.

Gun production triples under Obama to 10.8 million in 2013 to meet sales and concealed carry demand

Seen here:

The biggest change in production has come under President Obama. From 2001 to 2007, gun production held steady at between 3 million and 4 million units a year. It topped 4 million in 2008 but shot to 5.6 million in 2009, held steady in 2010 and then spiked to 8.6 million guns in 2012 and a record 10.8 million in 2013, according to ATF data. ...

Mr. [John R.] Lott [Jr.] said firearm sales, even more than manufacturing statistics, are a measure of the health of the movement, and those are also on the rise, with adjusted background checks — a good proxy for sales — growing from 8.9 million a year in 2008 to nearly 15 million in 2013. ...

Nationally, concealed carry permits have grown from 4.6 million in 2007 to more than 12 million now, Mr. Lott said.

Einstein's successor Freeman Dyson: Climatologists don't understand the climate, burning coal is good for crop yields

Quoted here in 2013:

"I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic."

"I just think they don’t understand the climate," he said of climatologists. "Their computer models are full of fudge factors."

"The models are extremely oversimplified," he said. "They don't represent the clouds in detail at all. They simply use a fudge factor to represent the clouds."

"It’s certainly true that carbon dioxide is good for vegetation," Dyson said. "About 15 percent of agricultural yields are due to CO-2 we put in the atmosphere. From that point of view, it’s a real plus to burn coal and oil."

"They’re absolutely lousy," he said of American journalists. "That’s true also in Europe. I don’t know why they’ve been brainwashed."

"It was similar in the Soviet Union," he said. "Who could doubt Marxist economics was the future? Everything else was in the dustbin."

Scott Walker could be the middle class' punk: Gabba Gabba, we accept you, we accept you, one of us

From a story here:

In an age when most potential presidential contenders are millionaires, Walker may end up being the closest thing to a middle-class presidential candidate that voters will see in 2016.

For most of the 1990s, the son of a Baptist minister made less than $40,000 a year from his salary as a lawmaker. As recently as 2006, Walker was making about $70,000 a year and living in a two-bedroom house with an unfinished basement, in part because as Milwaukee County executive he was giving a chunk of his salary back to taxpayers. ...

"They're as common as an old shoe," said Betty Balsley, who got to know the Walker family while the now-governor's father was serving as a pastor in Plainfield, Iowa.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ramones, Pinhead, here

Scott Walker's school voucher program is enormously popular with the poor in Wisconsin, but not with the establishment

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported here last May about applications for the school year just now winding down:

Under state law, the 25 private schools that receive the most applications are selected for the statewide voucher program. Because of a tie, 26 schools are selected for the upcoming school year.

Six new participants in the program are Fox Valley Lutheran High School in Appleton, Saint Paul Lutheran School in Bonduel, Winnebago Lutheran Academy in Fond du Lac, Twin City Catholic Educational System in Menasha and Neenah, and Saint Paul Lutheran School and Trinity Lutheran School, both in Sheboygan.

Each of the 26 schools will receive at least 10 voucher slots, with the remaining assigned through a random selection process. ...

A total of 1,000 vouchers are available, up from 500 in the first year of the program. ...

"Once again, applications far exceeded the cap," Jim Bender, president of School Choice Wisconsin, said in a statement. "For the second year in a row we have thousands of parents — over 70% — on the outside looking in." ...

The statewide program, called the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, is in its second year and is separate from voucher programs in Milwaukee and Racine. There are 1,220 students in the Racine Parental Choice Program and 25,397 in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, according fall enrollment data.

-----------------------------------------------

Governor Walker has proposed a complete elimination of the caps for the next two years, expanding the vouchers apparently at reduced amounts, and paying for it all by reducing allocations to the public school system by $150 per pupil in the first year.

School officials are predictably livid, as this story about a day long public hearing at Brillion High School recently reported:

Nearly all of the administrators who spoke opposed the expansion of the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, which allows low-income students to attend private or religious schools using a taxpayer-subsidized voucher.

-----------------------------------------------

Here's a novel idea. True "parental choice" would allow the taxpayers themselves to decide which schools their taxes fund. Imagine a check off list on your income tax form or property tax form like they have now for various charitable causes to which you may allocate all or a portion of your tax refund. Let's see how the taxpayers vote to spend their education money. Now that might really upset the establishment.

Let the people decide!

Try getting a gay wedding cake in Dearborn: So when are the corporations packing up to leave Michigan, huh?

Trolling the bakeries. Video here.

The Anthropocene Follies

Seems some people at Nature want to change the name of the current geological interglacial period now commonly known as the Holocene (the "completely newest period" for you Greek men out there, a very small part of, or the end of the much larger "most recent" Pleistocene and its Ice Ages, depending on who you read) to the Anthropocene (the new human epoch). To some this signifies that if you thought science had long ago killed-off anthropocentrism, you must think again because geology is being pressured to ascribe change to human influence just as has climate science. 

The wags here have suggested some amusing alternatives to the Anthropocene:

• Hubrisocene
• Windowsocene
• Googolocene
• Neocene
• Hollowscene
• Hollowcene
• Misanthropocene (very popular)
• Stultucene (probably the most anthropologically apt)
• Epicene (not that there's anything wrong with that)
• Crimescene
• Hubriocene
• Absurdopocene (has a real ring to it)
• Alarmistocene
• Nihilicene
• Anthroporcene (my personal favorite, but should be Anthropoporcene)
• Bulshitocene
• Horshitocene
• Whorshitocene (tmi if you ask me)
• Algoreopocene (quite)
• Narcissistocene
• Narcissene (not to be confused with Nazarene but gets at the religious underpinnings)
• Narcissicene
• Climeobscene
• Preposterousocene
• Mommymommylookatmeocene
• Bureaucrocene
• Anthropobscene
• Plasticene (for all you Beatles fans)
• Wherethehelldidiputitcene
• Mannthropocene (that's inviting a lawsuit I'd say)
• Sputnikocene (too brief to be measured)
• Incrediblyobcene
• Anthropoidiotcene
• Needtobecene (for the selfie craze)
• Egocene (nice)
• Fantacene
• Herbacene
• Vulcacene
• ChickenLittleocene
• Idiocene.

Perhaps more amusing is how contemporary science still must fall back on a long dead language of the Bronze Age in order to fish out the finest distinctions which only the Greek language can offer. Some animals are indeed more equal than others.

Memories Pizza has raised over $225K since this morning at 8:30

Obama's shitty jobs machine sputters out in March 2015: 3 month average adds falls to 197K (watch 'em blame the weather)

Support for Memories Pizza on GoFundMe soars above $500K, putting it in the top six causes ever

To avoid the Gay Mafia, almost all of the donations are anonymous.

Ronald Machen's miscarriage of justice in the matter of Lois Lerner

Seen here:

'Ellis [1969] involved a defendant who voluntarily testified before a grand jury but then refused to testify at trial, asserting his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Once Lerner voluntarily spoke to Justice Department prosecutors without receiving a grant of immunity, she lost her ability to invoke the privilege to avoid answering congressional questions about the same information she had already provided.

'Machen says that a “team of experienced career prosecutors” was assigned to review this matter, so certainly they would know about the Ellis rule. They also must know about Lerner’s extensive testimony to the prosecutors. So why would Machen completely ignore this in his letter?

'Ignoring highly relevant, although perhaps inconvenient, facts, outgoing U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen has issued a flawed legal analysis. It reaches an erroneous, but politically expedient, conclusion — one that gives Lois Lerner a pass and further hinders congressional efforts to get to the bottom of this scandal. It’s a pretty slick trick. No wonder Machen’s pulling a disappearing act.'

Winter in Grand Rapids Michigan was 23% colder in 2014 than in 2015

Grand Rapids, Michigan, was 3.2 degrees F below normal on average in March 2015, bringing the cumulative anomaly for the first three months of 2015 to -19.9 degrees F. The corresponding deficit from normal in 2014 was -24.4 degrees F, almost 23% colder. 

To that stupid prick, Josh Earnest, the Treaty clause of the Constitution doesn't exist

Seen here:

EARNEST: Well, again, I think it's hard to take seriously from some members of Congress who deny the fact that climate change exists, that they should have some opportunity to render judgment about climate change agreements.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur...

-- Article II, Section 2

What's hard to take seriously is anyone from this administration.

Hillary Clinton promised full cooperation with Congress in 2012, but still withheld at least 850 pages of Benghazi emails

Byron York reports:

[W]hen Clinton's secret email system was exposed this year, she turned over about 850 never-before-seen pages of Benghazi-related documents to the State Department, which in turn gave them to the House. Those documents had been under a request from Congress since the September 20, 2012 letter. The former secretary of state let more than two years pass before producing the information.

Take Clinton at her word that she turned over everything on her secret system related to Benghazi. The 850 pages still show that she withheld information from Congress for more than two years.

Concealing information from Congress is not a minor offense. The law allows for fines and punishment of up to several years in jail for anyone found guilty of doing it. Three examples:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the rest, go here.

Wrong about immigration, Marco Rubio joins the mouth-breathers dissing the education which helps keep us free

From the story here:

Earlier this month, addressing the issue of student debt, Sen. Marco Rubio joked that students ought to know in advance “whether it’s worth borrowing $40,000 to be a Greek philosophy major. Because the market for Greek philosophers is tight.” His remarks echo North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who in 2013 mocked liberal-arts courses and said, “I don’t want to subsidize [a major] that’s not going to get someone a job.” Gov. Rick Scott of Florida and former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas have passed legislation encouraging students to major in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines rather than the liberal arts. ...

Thomas Jefferson recognized that a broad education could ensure the survival of the new democracy. He recognized that “even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” To defend against this threat, Jefferson wanted “to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purpose.” ...

Considered in light of Jefferson’s argument, Mr. Rubio’s choice of Greek philosophy as a useless major seems especially inapt.

It's always Earth Hour in North Korea

Earth Hour 2015 at our house in Michigan

Hillary Clinton admits she destroyed the evidence by wiping her server clean

Politico reports the story here, featuring an unflattering photograph of Hillary, reminiscent of Miss Piggy.

Obstruction of justice.

Now Scott Walker wants us to believe "legal status" isn't amnesty

Scott Walker remains soft on illegal immigration.

He doesn't want to punish law-breakers, pure and simple, but instead reward them with "legal status", if not citizenship.

Big deal. Grow a pair, pal.

The New York Times reports here.