A Jewel

"Start with the EPA.  To the extent that the global warming movement has anything to do with "science," EPA is supposedly where that science is vetted and approved on behalf of the public before being turned into policy.  In fact, under Obama, EPA's principal role on the "science" has been to prevent and stifle any debate or challenge to global warming orthodoxy.  For example, when a major new Research Report came out back in Septemberclaiming to completely invalidate all of the bases on which EPA claims that CO2 is a danger to human health and welfare, and thus to undermine EPA's authority to regulate the gas under the Clean Air Act, EPA simply failed to respond.  In the same vein, essentially all prominent global warming alarmists refuse to debate anyone who challenges any aspect of their orthodoxy.  Well, that has worked as long as they and their allies have controlled all of the agencies and all of the money.  Now, it will suddenly be put up or shut up.  And in case you might think that the science on this issue is "settled," so no problem, you might enjoy this recent round-up at Climate Depot from some of the actual top scientists.  
http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2016/12/13/some-predictions-for-the-future-in-the-climate-game

Time for the emperor's clothes to come off so to speak.

Solid Reality

In a 1946 essay, George Orwell wrote that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” It’s not just that we’re easily misled. It’s that, by “impudently twisting the facts,” we can convince ourselves of “things which we know to be untrue.” A whole society, he wrote, can deceive itself “for an indefinite time,” and the only check on that mass delusion is that “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.” Science is one source of that solid reality. The Trump Administration seems determined to keep it at bay, and the consequences for society and the environment will be profound.
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/donald-trumps-war-on-science

I hate to even give this bit of tripe any attention, but I love the quote above - the sword cuts both ways.

The author goes on to say that it has been warmer every year since 2013 or so, but of course ignore that there's no way to know why that may be happening (or that the amounts are so small they are within the margin of error).

One should never deny objective reality, nor should one dismiss those things elevated to the point of theory by the scientific method.  Interestingly, folks like to pretend that AGW is both of those, when it is neither.  AGW cannot be tested by controlled experimentation in a lab, therefore, only an accurate model or models can prove that it is more than a conjecture.  The models today are not even close to accurate.

There's no denying these models, because they prove nothing, over and above that we don't yet know about why the climate changes.  It could, for example, be due to the sun, bad measurements, or the fact that things have been warming since the 1850s.

Science tells us not to trust scientists.  We don't have to deny a lack of scientific proof with regard to AGW, since it simply does not exist.

Hurt by Obamacare

More than 200 million have been hurt by it. Count them: 155 million with employer-provided plans whose deductibles have soared thanks to the ACA, plus the 11 million paying ACA penalties for not enrolling, plus hundreds of thousands of part-time workers whose hours were slashed by employers dodging the mandate, and 55 million seniors harmed when Medicare funding cuts bankrolled Obamacare.

https://spectator.org/trumps-path-to-obamacare-repeal/

I think there's a legit argument that deductibles have to be higher to incentivize better self care, a more competitive market and other more complex reasons with relation to health care cost control.  However, Obamacare is not doing that, it's just raising deductibles.  Higher deductibles with lower costs for care with more choices for patients, insurers and caregivers - and lower premiums for the healthy - is the winning formula.

Sure He Was a Homophobic Murderer But ...

OK, so he was a monster who murdered and tortured many, but his people (the compliant ones that were left after the murdering and torture) could read, and had GREAT health care. And don't forget, Fidel hated racial inequality. The fact that cuban girls were prostituting themselves for soap and shampoo money is a small price to pay for their health care and literacy (unless it was homosexual activity or left them with AIDS in which case off to the pokey for them) - heck they could read about themselves in US newspapers. 
What kind of person forgets the murder and torture when they talk about FC?
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/4640553-155/george-f-will-fidel-castro-and

Why Oh Why Did They Lose?????

AMERICA IS RACIST: A perennial favorite among leftists for explaining, well, everything. When pushing this one, it is helpful to avoid the question of why, or how, this racist nation so recently elected Barack Obama. Twice.

AMERICA IS SEXIST: Another hardy, all-purpose clarifier. In addition to the fact that over 50 percent of voters are female, there is the complicating factor that Trump’s “gender gap” was apparently smaller than the one often suffered by Republicans. Next.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/17/trumps_triumph_explained_132368.html

The why?  Because the Democratic Party (TDP) acts like folks in this country in violation of federal and state laws are victims while white Christians are the problem, and if I happen to think lawbreakers are bad they label me a "hater".  TDP acts as though people who want to pee in a bathroom with people who have different anatomical parts than theirs are victims, and those of us who fear sexual assault in public restrooms are frivolously fearful.

One might think TDP is pandering to the illegal aliens as a means to shore up their base of electoral support in the face of the declining population of African Americans and their fatigue with democrat promises.

I doubt the Christian church would still claim me, by the way, but I know that white Christians are not the problem.

I favor liberal, legal immigration.  I'm not the least bit afraid of people coming from lawless shitholes to find a better life.  Most of the negative unintended consequences of immigration come from criminalization of immigration. I resent being told I'm a hater because I expect people from lawless shitholes and TDP to understand that rule of law is what makes this place better than their lawless shit hole.

TDP acts as if the 99+% of gun owners who never hurt anyone are dangerous.  They act as if religious white people are a threat but Muslim immigrants from terrorist riddled nations need special consideration.

TDP acts as if working people who do not have a college degree are a liability, but those who are dependent on the state are victims.

TDP pretends that a 6'4" black man who attacks a cop and gets shot in the process is a victim, and the white cop getting the beating is a criminal (where were you Barry when you could have made a difference in perception?).  Yes, I've seen the videos of at least four incidents in which cops shot black men with zero justification, and it sickens me.  I'd happily sit on a jury and convict those guilty cops; not because I hate cops but because I took the responsibility to carry a weapon as an agent of the government and I expected to be held accountable for my actions.

TDP acts like the pathetic few who advocate racism or bigotry are a threat, even though those racists dare not show their faces - unless they are non-white.

TDP lost because they invented a racial narrative when a 16 year old dope smoking MMA trained bully tried to beat up an armed man with delusions of protective grandeur. They deliberately supported falsehoods about the circumstances of the young man's death and failed to state the truth; the young man's parents failed to parent him, instead they abandoned him (where were you Barry when you could have made a difference in perception?).  I am horrified that anyone loses their life due to their race.  I would step right between and assailant and your black/brown son/daughter - I went to combat zones 3 times and loved all my team mates of any ethnicity or religious belief.  I also know that if every time a black man dies the facts are distorted to create a "hate crime", people will stop caring about hate crimes.

If hate crimes were an everyday occurrence, no one would feel the need to imagine one where it did not happen.

TDP lost because they made the political calculation that attacking lawful gun ownership would be more popular than saying what is obvious - most gun violence is related to, paid for and inevitably due to the drug war.

TDP lost because they pretend to fear the power of the rich, but they are the rich.  They lost because they own the universities and can't tell the difference between the fantasy that is university life and the real world with real consequences that the rest of us live in.

TDP lost because they think or pretend to think that an AR-15 has some modern military voodoo, when in fact the AR is a semi automatic variant of a fully automatic rifle invented in the 50s. They are too ignorant to know, or pretend not to know, that magazine fed semi automatic rifles have been used by sportsmen since the 1930s.

TDP lost because they won't honestly discuss the science of climate alarmism and will happily sacrifice thousands of coal jobs on the altar of their Chicken Little redux.  Just say it - anthropogenic global warming is a conjecture and is not even close to being proved.  AGW conjecture is about strongly held belief, like religion.  Honesty about that simple, inarguable fact shouldn't be so rare.  Like the fat-makes-heart-disease conjecture, it is easy to manipulate even very smart people with weak science, and doing so hurts a lot of folks.

TDP lost because they nominated the presumptive first female president with plenty of reasons to know she would be a poor candidate or president.  They lost because they kept pretending that time in high government office means competence and ignored her willingness to get away with anything she thought she could.  They lost because they were willing to ignore how ignorantly she proceeded - fearing oversight within a US government email system, she gave state secrets to those who hacked her personal server.  They lost because when their destabilization of Syria and Libya exploded in their faces, killing 4 US citizens in service of the US government, they pretended like it wasn't their fault.

TDP lost because even after a succession of obvious and serious lies they kept riding the dead horse of Clinton. They kept supporting the person who had the nerve, after a career filled with monstrous lies and bullying of females victimized by her husband - to call Trump supporters deplorables.  Clinton number 2, a millionaire by virtue of shaking down donors for "charitable donations" in exchange for political access, feels entitled to label those who oppose her deplorable. It took someone like her to make Trump look good.

TDP because it has one basic message, repeated over and over in different forms:  "if you would just let us get together with our academic elite friends and organize the nation with innumerable new laws designed to create social justice, equality and unicorns for all of our friends; and send enough folks out in uniforms (and guns) to make you either comply (or be incarcerated), we can make it utopic around here."  It's the ultimate irony - TDP loves people with guns, as long as it is the government's agents are using those guns to coerce the citizenry to do what the TDP has decided is best for them.

TDP lost because they scoff at liberty, ignore the miracle of cooperation (you and I buy/sell from each other when you and I decide that's what's best for both of us) and oppose no new regulation while ignoring the faudulent disasters of government (10+% fraud in Medicare, year after year after year).

TDP lost because they talk out of all sides of their mouths and think we can't tell that's what they are doing, and while lying full time wear good intentions like the emperor's clothes.

TDP lost because their deplorable candidate couldn't even beat the worst imaginable opponent, the nearly criminally incompetent politician Donald Trump.  The joke is on them.

I have no joy in Trump's victory, and I hated depending on him to save me from TDP.  But at least he's better than JFK was.

Grow or Die

With 4% growth, most of the federal government's shortages - the ones we fight over - would go away. I don't know if an economy as large as ours can grow at that rate, especially when the rest of the world is stuck in the economic muck of authoritarianism. Growth rate increase should be the priority, it nudges every other lever for humans to thrive.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-entrepreneurial-way-to-4-growth-1479254382

Everything Costs Something To Someone

Earlier this year, the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the No Slacker Left Behind provision resulted in wage reductions of about $1,200 a year for workers with employer-based insurance coverage -- whether or not they had adult children on their plans. In effect, childless working people are subsidizing workers with adult children who would rather stay on their parents than get their own.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/16/the_slacker_mandate_and_the_safety_pin_generation_132360.html

And, even the benefits are overestimated ...

The Obama White House will brag that the slacker mandate has resulted in increased coverage for an estimated 3 million people. As usual with Obamacare numbers, it's Common Core, book-cooked math. Health care analyst Avik Roy took a closer look and found that the inflated figure came from counting "(1) young adults on Medicaid and other government programs, for whom the under-26 mandate doesn't apply; and (2) people who gained coverage due to the quasi-recovery from the Great Recession."