On January 13 and 14 a major blizzard hit the city of Chicago, and so ended the political career of one Michael Bilandic, from Wikipedia:
[Chicago’s] inadequate response to the blizzard was blamed primarily on mayor Michael Bilandic, who had assumed the post after the 1976 death of Richard J. Daley.[2][3] Newspaper articles at the time blasted Bilandic; Jane Byrne, Bilandic’s main political rival in the Democratic primary (who had previously worked with Bilandic in the Daley administration and been fired by Bilandic when the two could not get along), capitalized on this and went on to defeat Bilandic in the February 27 primary
On January 26, the much proclaimed story of the century did not hit New York City, from New York Post:
De Blasio defended his move to warn New Yorkers on Sunday that 3 feet of snow might be headed toward Gotham in what he said was expected to be a historic storm.
That announcement sent Big Apple residents running to stores to stock up on food, snow shovels and rock salt and led to the general clampdown on city activity.
“You can’t put a price on safety,” de Blasio said. “We’ve seen what happens when people are caught off guard. So we made the decision, better safe than sorry.”
Mayor Bill’s decision to shut-down Gotham, can be chalked to too much caution and too much nanny state mentality. On the other hand, New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo decision to shut down the New York City subway can only be attributed to hubris and shear ignorance, from Slate:
On the other hand, as Cuomo has alluded to Tuesday, the idea that a train could get stranded during a storm is not implausible. Limiting the number of trains on the tracks and keeping passengers off trains that might become stranded could avoid a potential crisis that might slow down the restoration of full service once the storm is over.
On the other other hand, Cuomo doesn’t seem to have said anything on Monday about trains running without passengers overnight, leading one to wonder whether he in fact knew that’s what would happen when he made his announcement. As writer Josh Barro observes, Cuomo has a very recent history of making bold leadership decisions that turn out not to be supported by reason or evidence.
In large part, the city subway system is resistance to snow, as almost all track is either underground or elevated. New York City subway has rarely beeen shutdown, and an impromptu could not have been part of any emergency response plan. The city keeps the trains running to keep the tracks open. The trains were running without passengers . They could just as well have been running with passengers. Bilandic under reacted. Cuomo over reacted. Yet the reason was the same, incompetence. Will Cuomo pay the same price Bilandic did?
I noticed Glenn making comments about Andrew Sullivan giving up blogging.
IN JOHN CARTER’S WORDS, I STILL LIVE: Andrew Sullivan is going to stop blogging. No, blogging isn’t dead. And InstaPundit gets more pageviews than pretty much everyone who’s calling blogging dead. But I can understand Andrew quitting. For me, the real strain isn’t the blogging, but having to pay close attention to the news all the time. The news is usually depressing, when it’s not angering, and that’s doubly true for the Obama years. But I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.
Well, it must be particularly depressing for Saint Andrew, who for the life of him, can’t figure out this most recent election. Yes, I’ve been watching his rather morose output . He’s basically just giving up, following that. Fully understandable, why Glenn doesn’t mention that.
But I will.
I suggest that the reason Glen is thriving is precisely because he’s not a Kool Aid drinker like Sullivan always has been. Well, at least since he decided to go crazy years ago.
Sullivan’s transition from an outspoken conservative to an outspoken leftist was the direct cause of his readership falling into John Crapper’s elegant device. It was a move that his readership numbers never recovered from.
Certainly, he got a number of newspaper berths over the years, at leftist rags, and kept himself in money, but he’d have done far better if he’d retained his common sense. Sad to say, he never did.
And to this day he doesn’t understand why, I’m quite sure.
I think Limbaugh got this one right…
They’re going to have to learn why this happened. Why was this presented, this forecast — and, even at its worst, it was gonna be 24 inches, which New York has survived countless times.
Yet this was presented as a life-threatening crisis, and look what they did, look at the economy, the economic commerce that these people from the National Weather Service and all these politicians collectively ganged up on and destroyed. Look at all the stores that closed unnecessarily. Look at all the flights that were canceled unnecessarily.Now, the weather guy is apologizing and blaming his models. The same people that tell us their models 50 to a hundred years out on climate change can be trusted. Anyway, I mean, I could, I could sit here and do a giant See, I Told You So, predicted this yesterday, and I know what you’re gonna retort: “Hey, Rush, they didn’t miss it. They just missed where. Boston, New England are getting pounded.” That’s all true. That’s all true, but, folks, 24 hours out they are forecasting that this is gonna be massive and they still miss it in the nation’s number one city. So just hang on for that. I mean, this is such a teachable moment.
It is such a teachable moment about government, the relationship that citizens have to and with government. It’s a lesson about how liberals do things and why, and why there will not be an apology from them. de Blasio is saying, “Hey, better safe than sorry.” They can never make a mistake. They never screw up. It’s everybody else that screws up and has to apologize.
And I think that’s exactly right. 
These are the people we are supposed to trust as regards to projecting weather trends over the next hundred or two hundred years, and they can’t get one weekend right, in one city. We are to believe that there will be no disruption to our lives, to our economy, to our freedoms, if we react as they suggest to the supposed threat of global warming, and yet look at the destruction that was wrought by governmental reaction to the mystic production of one the storm, much less the next hundred or two hundred years of our national life.
That point, it seems to me, is step one. Step two cuts a little deeper.
The underwriting, the umbrella thing here that everything falls underneath, liberalism has corrupted. People who are liberals are now at the National Weather Service, and they can’t separate their liberalism from the job. So they’re nannies, and they think most people are incompetent, unable to take care of themselves. Not competent, capable to make reasonable, correct judgments when they hear information. So they have to be babied; they have to be steered and so forth.
And in reality there is the core of it. They know better than we how to run our lives. These are the smartest guys in the room. And they never screw up. If you believe that, you probably believe that Obama is a great president. Frankly, I don’t know how to address that level of idiocy.
It says I’ve been writing in these spaces for near on two decades now, they think they know how to run your lives, your every activity, better than you. And if you don’t like what they’re doing y, they will use government force you to live to their standards. You’re completely incompetent to handle a snowstorm. And if you can’t handle that, how are you to handle keeping a job, keeping a roof over your head, knowing good from evil, and so on.
Now that we’ve come that far, let’s address the issue of Bill de Blasio. El Supremo himself. Here’s another situation, where his actions are coming back to bite him. Already is popularity is running much lower than it was, and is bound to go lower yet.
Let’s also look more closely at that blob in New Jersey. Chris Christie did nothing but follow along with the mayor’s lead. This is not a leader, this is a follower. And his choices of whom to follow, are questionable at least. I think he’s just been very successful indeed and ruling out any possibility of a presidential run. Just as well, since I really don’t want him anywhere near the White House. The ground in that particular Swamp is unstable enough.
I predict this is going to play heavy on the presidential campaign, going forward. These themes are going to do be central to the core of the arguments going forward. Who is it that is best equipped to deal with the questions of your everyday life? You, or the governments? The disaster that is the last 8 years, and particularly emblematic is the storm that wasn’t, will be the examples.
Hat tip: Mad Magazine
From Jeff Zeleny. ABC News:
Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said Tuesday he still intended to summon former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify as part of the investigation into the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya that killed four Americans.
“Every witness who has relevant information needs to be talked to,” Gowdy told reporters after a committee meeting Tuesday
Representative Gowdy wants all his ducks, read documents, in row before he calls Mrs. Clinton. This should prove amusing.
Karl Rove takes a two by four to Donald Trump, the failed casino owner who has never run for public office, the Snark of the Day:
“I love Mitt Romney being lectured by Donald Trump on choking, […] Trump is the guy who constantly chokes on the idea of becoming a candidate. He says he’s gonna run and then, like in 2012, goes out and gives a lousy speech in Las Vegas and ultimately decides his TV show is more important than his presidential campaign.”
Hat tip: Mediaite
from Karen, Lonely Conservative:
Here’s some shocking news – Cuba has walked out on talks with the United States because the Castro regime isn’t interested in improving its human rights record.
Inspector Renault could not be reached for comment.
The Breakfast Scramble:
Feel good story, four year old calls 911, saves mother’s life and become a big sister.
Paging Algore, two feet of global warming to bury Gotham.
New Jersey is the new Arkansas, and does that make Chris Christie the new Mike Huckabee?
Keystone Kops, police receive call of bomb in school. Find no bomb. Raid house of man who neither planted bomb that did not exist, nor made the phone call. Libtards mad swatting victim not arrested.
I would suggest at Algore walk the walk on his so-called global warming, but Algore is too fat to walk the walk. Well Algore, the feeling is mutual. So propose to settle for Algore waddling the waddle, from Breitbart:
A squadron of 1,700 private jets are rumbling into Davos, Switzerland, this week to discuss global warming and other issues as the annual World Economic Forum gets underway.
The influx of private jets is so great, the Swiss Armed Forces has been forced to open up a military air base for the first time ever to absorb all the super rich flying their private jets into the event, reports Newsweek.
“Decision-makers meeting in Davos must focus on ways to reduce climate risk while building more efficient, cleaner, and lower-carbon economies,” former Mexican president Felipe Calderon told USA Today.
Davos, which has become a playground of sorts for the global elite, is expected to feature at least 40 heads of state and 2,500 top business executives. Former Vice President-turned-carbon billionaire Al Gore and rapper Pharrell Williams will be there as well; each plans to discuss global warming and recycling respectively.
Until these self-proclaimed do gooders and faux expert start treating global warming, climate change, or whatever, like a problem instead of an excuse for an expensive lark in the park, there is no need, at all, to take these jokers seriously.
Hat tip: Darleen, Protein Wisdom.
Alternative title, the chickens come home to poop.
Follow this timeline, if you will. In November, some unknown regime official referred to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “chickenshit.” Now this same, or another, regime official is “offended because Netanyahu did not seek the regime’s blessing before accepting an invitation to address Congress, from Times of Israel:
In November the already faltering ties between the leaders were served a new blow when an anonymous US official was quoted calling Netanyahu a “chickenshit” in an article published by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the American magazine The Atlantic. The article portrayed the rift between the United States and Israel as a “full-blown crisis.”
Now:
The public spat between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and US President Barack Obama’s administration escalated further Friday evening, with US officials reportedly charging that it will be “hard to trust” Netanyahu, following the fallout from the announcement Wednesday that the PM would address Congress in two months, a move he failed to coordinate with the White House.
Read more: ‘It will be hard to trust Netanyahu’ after latest bust-up, US officials reportedly say | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/it-will-be-hard-to-trust-netanyahu-after-latest-bust-up-us-officials-reportedly-say/#ixzz3Pgj7wQvP
Comprehend, when I call you a chickenshit, it follows that I feel you don’t have the standing to meaningfully insult me. Yet the one hand, the regime says that Netanyahu is an insignificant nothing, but on the other, they are offended by the same insignificant nothing. Go figure. The regime of the lame duck is now feeding on chickenshit. Expect Bibi to keep the regime well feed.
Being born and raised in western New York, I am no fan of the New England Patriots. I want that understood before you continue.
That having been said, I wonder how genuine this problem is of the deflating footballs. I know, for example, in my own experience that when you have a tire let’s say a truck tire, blown up to 100 psi, and you subjected to temperatures that are much colder than where it was blown up, you will get what’s commonly referred to as shrinkage. The pressure will go down rather substantially. That’s why you have cars with extremely low tires, many of them having gone flat entirely every time there’s a cold snap here in the Northeast.
So, with that in mind, I wonder why it is that nobody has thought to apply that to the situation currently ravaging the NFL? Have we lost all ability for critical thinking?
Blow a bunch of footballs up, in cold weather, and then wonder why the pressure inside them has gone down substantially?
That having been said, can we get off this nonsense and get on to something important?
The arguments for homosexual marriage has always been “discrimination”. To not allow them to marry is just take headed and discriminatory. David and I have argued over the years that such what open the flood gates to any form of coupling, calling it “marriage”.
David and I were both laughed off the planet as were the other people who made the same argument.
So, comes this story out of New Jersey where it is apparently legal to marry your own father.
FOX News — A teenager has revealed in an interview that she plans to marry her father and have children after dating for two years.
The unnamed 18-year-old revealed in an interview with New York Magazine her romantic relationship of almost two years with her biological father after being estranged from him for 12 years.
In the interview, the girl also said the two plan on having children as well.
The teenager said her father reached out to her on Facebook when she was in high school and soon after, she went to stay with him for a week.
After the week together, the 18-year-old said they had sex and were dating a short time later.
Said one respondent in an email to me, “I didn’t even know in incest in New Jersey was legal”. To which of course I responded “How else to explain the left leaning politics in New Jersey other than the several generations of inbreeding?”
In any event, this is as I said years ago the use of government to destroy instead of support the culture.
Can we say “I told you so”, now?
Luke Russert, son of a great news commentator and grandson of garbage collector from Buffalo, New York, slammed Joni Ernst, daughter of pig farmer from Rod Oak, Iowa. from PJ Media:
Congressional correspondent Luke Russert said on MSNBC Tuesday that freshman Sen. Joni Ernst was a pig farmer this time last year and marveled that she is now she is giving the rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union address. “That is an extraordinary rise in politics right there,” Russert told Joy Ann Reid.
Russert said that Ernst is emblematic of what the GOP wants to be. “That is what you’ll see her do tonight, sell her personality as a war veteran and somebody who was a pig farmer around this time last year and now giving the rebuttal to the president.”
Russert’s grandfather worked for a living. Russert’s father worked his way through college collecting garbage. I have no problem with the son of garbage collector rising to come the most respected news commentator on a broadcast television network. Does young Russert think me wrong. Yet while young Russert sees fit to ride a garbage truck to Washington, he derides a farm girl for hitching a ride on pig. As a society, we need both garbage collectors and pig farmers. We like to eat and eating produces garbage which we are loath to smell. New commentators, only the other hand, produce little of value, and young Russert’s case, only produce what his grandfather hauled away.
Eric described the Dim Won’s State of the Union speech(SOTU) as a barn dance. I beg to differ. What Obama offered up was yet another snake dance. Obama is incapable of leadership. A leader sees the situation as it is, remains calms and responds with action is both appropriate and possible. In contrast, Obama only speaks of a world that simply does not exist, and proposes action which has no connection to reality. Byron York sums up Dim Won’s seven thousand words in one paragraph, from Washington Examiner:
Perhaps Richard Engel found the key to the president’s nearly 7,000-word speech: Obama described the world as he wishes it were, not as it actually is. Indeed, in Obama’s State of the Union, things are going so well that it’s hard to imagine why voters would decisively turn control of Congress over to the opposition party — not that Obama would acknowledge that, either. Doing so would be a concession that something is still terribly wrong..
Lead, follow or get out of the way. Obama is incapable to the former two. He should do the latter.D
So, we have this problem with Islamic fundamentalism. We’ve had it for some time now, as there are some within our military and the majority of the rest of the world considers that threat to be the largest we’ve ever encountered. Yet, last night, all we have seen and all we have heard is about patting Obama on the back for having solved the unemployment problem, (which of course, he didn’t do)…and lots of giveaways, which of course will be paid for by taxing the rich.
Well of course we’ve discussed and demonstrated several times in these spaces that taxing the rich does absolutely nothing to solve anything, except for modifying the leftist base. And that left his base needs an awful lot of mollifying of late.
As an example, only 16 percent of Americans feel that the government is telling us the truth with regards to unemployment figures according to a recent poll by yougov. That figure alone suggests that even the Democrats, thick as they can be sometimes, have finally caught on to the idea that they’re being lied to by the administration.
By the way, if you were watching, did you happen to notice Justice Ginsburg, doing her perennial Ruth Buzzi imitation, sleeping through the whole of the speech? Who could blame her for sleeping through that nonsense, I guess, there was absolutely nothing new or earth-shaking in it.
This administration is in trouble and they know it. The Democrats are in serious turmoil, and they know it. At a time when the American people are clamoring for jobs and for a response to Islamic fundamentalism and the president is out there spending the majority of his time in the State of the Union address talking about global warming, and about taxing the rich, there is clearly a disconnect going on. Of course, that disconnect has always been there, it’s just now the most obvious that it’s been in a long time. Last night, was a great many things, but primarily it was the largest sign yet that this administration, frankly, is circling the drain.
Let’s just hope the country doesn’t go down with it. To my mind, that stands as a very real and very dangerous possibility given the two years Obama has left to cause more damage.
From my inbox this morning, somebody sent me a copy of this article was listing the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in America. I note with some degree of interest that one of them is in good old Rochester New York. The neighborhood but they choose to display doesn’t surprise me at all. Then again, looking down the list none of them do.
I say that, because in doing some cross referencing on each one of these neighborhoods, I notice a pattern. That pattern being, that every single one of them is represented at the city state county and national levels by Democrats.
Every single one.
Do the math, people.
