‘Warmest Year’ Claims Rapidly Wilt Under Scrutiny

No sooner had 2015 arrived than newspaper headlines and television anchors trumpeted the news international science agencies, including the Japan Meteorological Agency, the World Meteorological Organization, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, had concluded 2014 was the warmest year on record. ✧ But almost before the initial flurry of interviews on the topic was over, the headlines changed and the claim of record-setting high temperatures in 2014 was watered down by a variety of caveats.

Maybe, Maybe Not... Read more at Heartland.org Read More......

Are we seeing a war among women?

LOS ANGELES TIMES - Have you heard? The Republican war on women is over! Well, the “Republican war on women” is over. The trope, if not the actual phenomenon, has joined the ranks of retired political euphemisms. At least according to Republicans. The GOP victories in the midterm elections have been attributed to any number of factors, Obama’s new status as Undecider-in-Chief high among them. But Republicans have been patting themselves on the back especially hard for finally making headway with the group that purportedly loathed them more than any other: that monolith known as women.

In Texas, working-class Democratic heroine Wendy Davis was slaughtered in her bid for governor against Republican Greg Abbott, getting just 45 percent of women’s votes to her opponent’s 54 percent. In Colorado, Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, whose emphasis on abortion rights got him dubbed Mark Uterus, lost his seat to a Republican challenger framed as staunchly pro-life. Here in Southern California, birth control crusader Sandra Fluke, whose career took off after Rush Limbaugh did her the great favor of calling her a slut, ran for a state senate seat and was trounced by a fellow Democrat. Though women’s health wasn’t a major campaign issue, it’s telling that liberal local voters weren’t sufficiently moved by Fluke’s story to choose her over her more seasoned opponent.

Meanwhile, the GOP made women’s history. Mia Love, a Haitian American Mormon from Utah, will become the first black female Republican ever to serve in Congress.

Elise Stefanik, 30, of New York’s 21st district, became the youngest woman of any party to be elected to Congress.


Iowa elected its first female senator, combat veteran Jodi Ernst, who talked in television ads about growing up castrating pigs.

In the up-and-comer category, there was Saira Blair, an 18-year-old college freshman and self-described “pro-gun, pro-life, fiscal conservative” who ran a campaign out of her dorm room and won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates. In other words, ladies, it’s time to lay down our arms. Old white men are not coming after our birth control and legislating our bodies. Eighteen-year-old girls are! So shut up, already! Of course, none of this changes the fact that 64 percent of white men voted for Republicans in last week’s elections. Moreover, nearly two-thirds of eligible voters didn’t bother to show up at the polls at all. Maybe that’s because some of them, including women who once believed Republicans were waging a war on them, were busier ranting at and fighting with each other on social media than actually getting involved with the political process. It could be a coincidence, but I can’t help but notice that as the “war on women” recedes, women seem to be fighting a civil war among themselves.

Question affirmative consent on campus and you risk being called a rape apologist. Chuckle at a celebrity’s overzealous plastic surgery or prolific romantic history and you’re a body shamer or slut shamer. Engage in reasoned debate over women’s sexuality, creative expression or place in the world and you’re likely to be schooled by a sisterhood whose members are admirably passionate but somehow unable to get their heads around the idea that people who agree on the big issues can respectfully disagree on lots of smaller ones.

In other words, you’re likely to encounter progressive women who think that all women, especially all progressive ones, should be a monolithic entity — which is even more exasperating than conservative men who think the same thing. Contact Meghan Daum at mdaum@latimescolumnists.com Read More......

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Conservatives need to wake up and start thinking past the rapidly passing age of Obama. Increasingly likely every day is that voters this November will remove Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. By electing a new Republican Senate majority, the voters will also render Barack Obama a lame duck, one of the lamest in history, as he will have no prayer of getting any of his legislative proposals — increasingly recognized as hard left — through Congress. (Despite his early national rhetoric, Obama doesn’t do bipartisanship.)

Read more at the American Spectator
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

GOP women to screen film on sex trafficking

The Benton County Republican Women will screen the film “Chosen,” about sex trafficking, at noon Monday, March 24th, at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, 645 N.W. Monroe Ave. Read more at Corvallis Gazette-Times. Social starts at 11:30a.m. Read More......

Reality Is Crashing Down On GOP Leaders' Amnesty Plan

Immigration: Anti-amnesty Republicans prepare for an intra-party war, while wiser voices tell House Speaker John Boehner to drop immigration for 2014. Disunity going into this year's elections would be inexcusable. ✧ Thanks to the ObamaCare debacle and the IRS, Benghazi and other scandals, Republicans will almost surely drub the Democrats in this year's midterm elections. They'll hold on to the House of Representatives and maybe even win control of the Senate. ✧ So why spoil it all by fighting a bloody internecine battle on immigration?

Read more at Investor's Business Daily
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Merkley: Tied to a promise

(Hat tip: KimR) WASHINGTON — Four years ago, newly elected Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., was assigned to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and quickly established himself as a vehement advocate for health care reform. ✧ “Twenty years from now we’ll look back at this seminal opportunity and ask ourselves whether we rose to the challenge,” Merkley wrote in The Huffington Post in July 2009. “We’ll ask whether we stuck with the status quo: a health care system that drains wealth from our country and leaves millions of Americans behind. Or, did we answer the overwhelming call of the American people to reform our health care system by improving care, lowering costs and making health care work for all Americans?” ✧ Four years later, Merkley is preparing to defend his Senate seat for the first time, while President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act looms as a potentially large campaign issue in the 2014 election.

Read more at the Bend Bulletin Read More......