(LA Times) The city of Santa Monica can bar seasonal displays, including a Nativity scene that has appeared in Palisades Park for nearly 60 years, a federal judge ruled Monday.
In a closely watched case that has attracted national attention, Judge Audrey B. Collins denied a request from the Santa Monica Nativity Scenes Committee to erect multiple large displays depicting the story of the birth of Jesus in the park overlooking the ocean. The coalition of churches has erected the displays every December since the 1950s.
But last year, after requests for display spots exceeded the space allotted, the city held a lottery to allocate spaces. Atheists won 18 of 21 spots. A Jewish group won another. The traditional Nativity story that used to take up 14 displays was crammed into two.
This has been going on for years, with the atheists trying hard to shut down the nativity scene.
“The atheists won,” said William Becker, attorney for the Nativity group. He then went on to compare the city to Pontius Pilate, the judge at Jesus’ trial, saying: “It’s a shame about Christmas. Pontius Pilate was exactly the same kind of administrator.”
That they did. Sadly. It’s always a shame that there are people who want to ruin things for everyone else, simply because they are offended.
I blame you, Gore disciple, for driving a fossil fueled vehicle.
Oh, BTW, 2 more Stimulus backed companies announced problems the other day. Solar World ($82 million) and SunTech ($2.1 million) plan to start laying off employees.
Talking Points Memo is shocked, shocked!, that Republican governors would leave the job of setting up the exchanges to the Central Government Planning Office
Late last week more than a dozen Republican governors declared that they will not build the insurance market exchanges called for by the Affordable Care Act, including prominent names like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, John Kasich of Ohio, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Perry of Texas.
On Monday, Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma joined them, declaring in a statement that it “does not benefit Oklahoma taxpayers to actively support and fund a new government program that will ultimately be under the control of the federal government.â€
Most people still do not want ObamaCare implemented. It still polls negatively. And Republicans will do all they can to gum up the works of a law that was rammed through the Senate and House.
The Obama administration wants states to build the exchanges so they have an incentive to make the law work. If the federal government takes over, state-level Republicans have a scapegoat in case things go wrong.
That’s part of the reason, but, there is a bigger reason
The more states stonewall the exchanges, the more it complicates the task of the federal government. One challenge is that the law lacks an automatic funding mechanism for HHS to set up state exchanges. Enrollment is slated to begin next October, and the exchanges are scheduled to start functioning by January 2014.
So far, over a dozen Republican governors have opted to let the Central Government deal with setting up exchanges. Others have not decided as of yet, but will surely opt for federal exchanges. First, they do not want to be on the hook for helping create an exchange. Second, as mentioned, this puts the blame in Obama’s hands. Third, as mentioned, there is no funding mechanism. When the special interests, healthcare companies, and insurance companies wrote the 2,700 page law that no one who provided a “yea” vote for read, they forgot to provide funding to set up and administrate federally run exchanges. And the slush fund for HHS is “only” a billion dollars, not enough to do the job.
The law is also rather murky on the legality of the Central Government setting up federally run exchanges.
So, yes, Republicans are going to gum up the works. Perhaps Democrats should have read the Bill before passing it. Because the GOP controlled House will not allow changes to strengthen the ACA under any circumstances.
Before virtually every holiday the believers in “climate change” trot out all sorts of scary stories about how mankind’s release of greenhouse gases will ruin the holiday in the future. This year’s w(h)inner is Mother Jones
Thanksgiving is supposed to be all about bounty, right? Cornucopias? Tables groaning with goodies?
Sure—for now. But (holiday buzzkill alert!) if the globe continues to warm, that Turkey Day spread could end up looking quite paltry. In honor of everyone’s favorite day of feasting, here’s a preview:
Ah, the old “sometime in the future bad things might possibly maybe kinda sorta happen” canard.
The “turkey belt” of the United States is in the South, where states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Arkansas contribute the bulk of our national annual haul of over a quarter of a billion birds. But if you’re worried about keeping turkey on your Thanksgiving table into the future, you might turn your attention to the Midwest. After this summer’s record-breaking heat and drought in the Corn Belt, the grain supplies that plump the birds up for market dwindled, prices spiked, and as of fall turkeys are the most expensive per pound they’ve been in 10 years.
Except there have been record corn crops across the United States and the world this year (and previous years). And drought is no worse than it was 60 years ago when CO2 was under 350ppm. For those who’ve been to the supermarket to buy a turkey know that you can get one pretty cheap. Heck, I was in WalMart yesterday (bought my bird at Kroger, though) and saw prices as low as 88 cents a pound. One of the main drivers of rising feed costs is using it as fuel. Mostly worthless fuel.
No halfway decent Thanksgiving plate is complete without a dollop of mashed potatoes and gravy. Unfortunately, rising temperatures are endangering the future of that creamy dish. Elevated spring temperatures in Idaho could produce an 18 percent drop in spud yields and an annual $141 million economic loss to the state, according to the American Security Project. Additionally, volatile rainfall will also create irrigation problems.
Except, we’ve seen record crops this year, as well. But, it could happen!!!!1!!! It hasn’t yet, and virtually every Warmist prediction has failed, and, why do you keep asking such inconvenient questions and using the Internet to look up information? Just fall in line, pal!
Also mentioned are cranberries (yuck), spinach (yuck), corn (remember, record yields), and pumpkins (no research done, but “studies suggest something or other mumble in the mumble future). Bad things could maybe happen. Hey, remember back to the Little Ice Age when it was cold and crops were really failing and tens of millions were starving?
Warmists are some seriously depressing people, don’t you think? They refuses to modify their own lives to Do Something about their beliefs: they prefer to just whine.
Yet in the 1950s incomes in the top bracket faced a marginal tax rate of 91, that’s right, 91 percent, while taxes on corporate profits were twice as large, relative to national income, as in recent years. The best estimates suggest that circa 1960 the top 0.01 percent of Americans paid an effective federal tax rate of more than 70 percent, twice what they pay today.
The science does not exist to make detailed forecasts for temperature and snowfall for the end of this month, let alone for December or even the winter as a whole with these types of forecasts only able to provide an indication of how our weather might change, or be different from normal, (i.e. warmer, colder, wetter, drier) across the whole UK or even Europe.
But, the people who work there have no problem droning on about being able to predict hotcoldwetdry (hey, did the Met Office steal my meme?) 50-100 years down the road.
Melanie Phillips points out just how super duper mean Israel has been so far
Here is some information about the war between Gaza and Israel that for some unaccountable reason you may have missed today in Britain’s mainstream media.
The casualty rate in Gaza from Israeli strikes is astoundingly low
Since the beginning of Israel’s operation Pillar of Defence last Wednesday against Hamas rocket attacks, there have been more than 1000 Israeli air strikes. At time of writing, the Palestinian death toll is 69. That is a staggeringly small number of fatalities for more than 1000 bombing raids.
It shows beyond doubt that the Israelis are not only doing everything they can to avoid civilian casualties, but have achieved a degree of precision in doing so which no other army can match. For sure, every civilian casualty is regrettable, and the deaths of children are always tragic — today’s apparently heavy toll particularly so, including at what appears to have been a mistaken target. Such mistakes inevitably happen in war.
Consider that most of those deaths can be laid on Hamas’ doorstep, as they surround themselves and their weapons with human shields, yet, that is a low body count. All Israel wants is for these “Palestinian” terrorists, backed by Syria and Iran, among others, to stop targeting Israel. Hamas, for its part, is intentionally targeting civilian areas, yet, the media, and liberal, outcry is barely noticeable.
We also learn that the breathless reports by many media outlets about Israel having killed a child in Gaza was a load of mule fritters, typical Islamist fake propaganda. We look towards the Sunday Telegraph
But there were signs on Saturday that not all the Palestinian casualties have been the result of Israeli air strikes. The highly publicised death of four-year-old Mohammed Sadallah appeared to have been the result of a misfiring home-made rocket, not a bomb dropped by Israel.
Hamas to blame.
The child’s death on Friday figured prominently in media coverage after Hisham Kandil, the Egyptian prime minister, was filmed lifting his dead body out of an ambulance. “The boy, the martyr, whose blood is still on my hands and clothes, is something that we cannot keep silent about,†he said, before promising to defend the Palestinian people.
That’s strange, it’s almost like the Egyptian PM has gone Islamist, talking about martyrs. Who would have thought Egypt would end up with extremists in government?
But, we all know that Liberals around the world will take the side of the Islamic extremists in Gaza. Why? They hate Israel. Doesn’t matter that the Islamic extremists stand against everything that Liberals do….well, they do both want fascist government and shut down opposing viewpoints, but, otherwise, disagree on every social issue…..and Israel is closer on social issues: liberals loathe Israel, and would like to see the country wiped off the map.
Just to be clear for those who aren’t aware, I’m not fan of Sarah Palin anymore. I was once, having rooted for her to be picked as VP back in early 2008. I still think she has great ideas and can reach people, but the way in which she abandoned any run for the 2012 presidency is what turned me into somewhat of a Palin hater. That said, I’m going to try and be fair and leave those feelings out.
The article goes on to point at that she was not the reason Obama lost (she wasn’t: look at the state polls, and realize that McCain started trending downwards quickly after his “suspension of his campaign” stunt, after trending upwards and even putting deep Blue states, like Michigan, in play. He had the Bush 2004 states locked up), and that the writer, Charlotte Allen, is serious about Palin 2016.
Gabriel Malor, writing for the New York Daily News’ blog, pinpointed another reason: By focusing his campaign mostly on serious economic and political issues such as the national debt and tax incentives, Romney failed to take into account the fact that large segments of the electorate neither know nor care much about serious economic and political issues. What they — a group sometimes euphemistically called “uninformed voters” — do know and care about are the tugs on their emotions, fears, revulsions and heart strings provided by hours and hours of uninterrupted television watching .
Romney did a fantastic job in responding to Team Obama, and responding quickly. But, as I have argued, his campaign made the decision to be the adult in the room and avoid those deep smear attacks, going very negative, and really reaching for the heart strings. He ran as if he was applying for a job as a CEO of a super massive corporation.
Palin can more than keep up with the Democrats in appealing to voters’ emotions. Hardly anyone could be more blue collar than Palin, out on the fishing boat with her hunky blue-collar husband, Todd. Palin is “View”-ready, she’s “Ellen”-ready, she’s Kelly-and-Michael-ready.
A Palin “war against women”? Hah! Not only is she a woman, she’s got a single-mom daughter, Bristol, to help with the swelling single-mom demographic. On social issues, Palin, unlike Romney, has been absolutely consistent. And let’s remember that most Americans, whatever their view of choice, disapprove of most abortions.
Gay marriage? Palin opposes it. But she is also a strong advocate of states’ rights, and I’m betting she’d be fine with letting states and their voters grapple with the issue on their own. Remember that all of America didn’t swing toward approval of gay marriage on Nov. 6. Three reliably blue states and their voters did. If she were smart, Palin would recruit a member of her impressive gay fanboy base — yes, she has one — to help run her campaign. I nominate Kevin DuJan of the widely read gay conservative blog HillBuzz, a Palin stalwart since 2008.
There are other good points, such as her son Track being an Iraq war vet, she’s dynamic, young, and good looking, and, let’s face it, the lady is very tough, refusing to back down in the face of all the attacks and personal smears thrown her way and towards her family.
Sarah Palin is the new Ronald Reagan: charming and affable and unwilling to back down if she’s right. I can’t see what’s wrong with that.
She has the potential to be. She is a great, plain spoken politician, though I think she needs to reduce the homilies and increase the number of big words she uses, and delve deeper into subjects. She can talk to people as people, and tug on their passions. Policy wise, she is a bit squishy on illegal immigration and globull warming, but, strong on economic issues and energy. She needs to explain those in more detail.
Could she be the GOP’s hope in 2016? I have two problems with this. First, the aforementioned way she bailed on running in 2012, which I won’t delve into. Second, where was she during the 2012 cycle? No one can argue that her influence and support wasn’t a top 2 factor in the GOP’s historic House blowout of the Democrats. But, what did she do during this cycle? Where was her support of Romney and others? Why wasn’t she out on the trail stumping for Republicans? She putzed around for half a year before bowing out ungracefully.
If she wants to be the nominee, Palin needs to start soon. She needs to make sure her plans are in place, substantive and detailed. She needs to put a team together, and get out and about. She needs to jump in with both feet and join the circus, er, GOP debates. If she does that, her appeal, toughness, and ability to connect to people’s hearts will win out.
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