Yes West Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/climate

Hopefully this lack of movement indicates that the faux climate change movement is about to collapse. The timely journalistic coup that exposed global warming's biggest advocates as cunning manipulators of public opinion and enemies of scientific inquiry probably saved the day.

We should continue to find technologies that reduce pollution, but we do not need chicken little scare tactics to keep moving forward towards cleaner use of all energy sources.

WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO 6 AM EST SUNDAY

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN STERLING VIRGINIA

Event: Winter Storm Warning
Alert:

...WINTER STORM WARNING NOW IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO
6 AM EST SUNDAY...

THE WINTER STORM WARNING IS NOW IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING
TO 6 AM EST SUNDAY.

* PRECIPITATION TYPE...SNOW.

* ACCUMULATIONS...HEAVY SNOW WITH ACCUMULATIONS OF 10 TO 16 INCHES
THROUGH SATURDAY NIGHT.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL BEGIN FRIDAY NIGHT BETWEEN 9 AND 11 PM. SNOW
WILL BE HEAVIEST FROM 4 AM TO 4 PM SATURDAY.

* TEMPERATURES...TEMPERATURES WILL HOVER IN THE LOW TO MID 20S.

* WINDS...10 TO 15 MPH THROUGH THE EVENT...WITH GUSTS TO 25 MPH
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY.

Instructions: A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. STRONG WINDS ARE ALSO POSSIBLE. CONDITIONS WILL DETERIORATE VERY RAPIDLY EARLY SATURDAY MORNING AND WILL MAKE TRAVEL EXTREMELY TREACHEROUS.

Target Area: Hampshire Morgan Berkeley Jefferson Pendleton Hardy Western Mineral Eastern Mineral

A Crowded Field and Digging a Deeper Hole

Complicated or refreshing? When you look at the field of candidates contending for the GOP nomination in the First Congressional District, either one of these words could come to mind. Yes there is currently a bewildering array of contenders, some strong, some with more of an outsiders' chance. They agree on many basic ideas, but differ in important ways. Over the next few months we will try to help sort out the differences between the candidates.

How is this refreshing? The people have come out and let it be known that Congress as currently constituted has performed unacceptably. As usual they show a complete disconnect from the people, but in the past few years they have also worked very hard to drive our country into decline. Massive debts destroy the financial reputation that we worked so hard to create dating back to Alexander Hamilton. The world has lost faith in our ability to lead the economy and make sound decisions. Some see an opportunity to use the current crisis to tweak the eagle's tail and cut us down a peg. No doubt our own left wing in theis country loves to see the United States shorn of its traditional dominance. But is this healthy for the world at large?

Who to blame? Obama has done a lot of damage, but the current majority party has seen nothing but decline since they took office in 2007. When Obama blames current problems on conditions created before he took office, he is careful to forget the votes and policies of a Democratic Congress.

Obviously the problem is the Democratic Party's massive lurch to the left. Mollohan has to march in step to ultra left winger Nancy Pelosi and her desire to destroy gun rights, coal mining, publicly fund abortions, raise the debt sky high, and do a lot of other things that will harm our nation and its people. We realize that a vote for Alan Mollohan os a vote for Nancy Pelosi and her disastrous record. Regradless of the good services he has done for individuals seeking help from his office, he is supporting the majority party in Congress whose almost every move has harmed West Virginia.

Most recently Congress raised the debt ceiling to allow yet another so-called stimulus package through by the barest of majorities. Alan Mollohan and Nick Joe Rahall voted to waste more money. Shelley Moore Capito voted against it, remembering much of the stimulus money spent last time went to groups like ACORN.

2010 cannot come soon enough. Mollohan's weakness is evident in his paltry fundraising and the enthusiasm of an army of candidates expecting to unseat him. Republicans in the First District need to band together this summer and fall and send Alan Mollohan and the Dmeocratic Congress into retirement.

NOAA: WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH LATE SATURDAY NIGHT

WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH
LATE SATURDAY NIGHT

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN STERLING VIRGINIA HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WATCH...IN EFFECT FROM LATE FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH
LATE SATURDAY NIGHT.

* PRECIP TYPE...SNOW.

* ACCUMULATIONS...HEAVY SNOW WITH ACCUMULATIONS GREATER THAN 5 INCHES.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL BEGIN LATE FRIDAY NIGHT AND WILL CONTINUE THROUGH SUNDAY MORNING.

* TEMPERATURES...UPPER 20S TO LOWER 30S THROUGH THE EVENT.

* WINDS...10 TO 20 MPH THROUGH THE EVENT...WITH GUSTS OF 25 TO 30 MPH SATURDAY AND SUNDAY. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A WINTER STORM WATCH MEANS THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT

SNOW THAT MAY IMPACT TRAVEL. CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE LATEST
FORECASTS.

Capito Votes Against Democrats’ Year-End Spending Spree

House Leaders Rush to Spend Even More as 2009 Session Comes to Close

WASHINGTON – With the House of Representatives finishing up the year today with appropriations measures and a hike in the debt limit, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., didn’t mince words when discussing her views on the Democrat’s year-end agenda.

“This is nothing but more of the same: more spending, more taxes and little to show for it,” said the 2nd District congresswoman.

“My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are pushing an agenda with more spending on programs that can’t even spend what they have now. And they’re hiking the nation’s debt limit to $12.4 trillion so they can borrow the money they need to do it. It’s irresponsible, it’s ill-conceived and it’s unlikely to meet with any more success than what we’ve seen with the first stimulus package.

Capito noted the troubling state of the job market and expressed skepticism that the Democrat’s latest “jobs” bill would realistically address it. She also raised objections to Democratic efforts to raid TARP funds that were originally pegged to help pay down the debt.

“Don’t be misled, this is not a ‘jobs’ bill,” she said. “Last time I checked, after passing a $787 billion stimulus package, the national unemployment rate is still in double digits and West Virginia’s unemployment rate is on the rise.”

“Instead of repeating the mistakes of the original stimulus so my colleagues can feign concern on jobs, let’s offer real relief for small business owners and put a stop to the troubling anti-growth policies that continue to stem from this congress.”

Tea Party Movement Now More Popular Than Either Political Party

This morning's news broadcast out of Washington made an interesting statement. For a few weeks now polls showed that the Tea Party movement outstripped the Republican Party in popularity. This morning the Democrats now find themselves looking up at the Tea Party in terms of support numbers.

Liberal media types write with glee about the demise of the Republican Party and th epotential for splintering going into the election of 2010. That being said, the GOP has substantially outraised the Democratic Party since Obama took office.

Left wing control of the government sparked outrage over the waste of money and time. Frustrated protesters have seen the Republican Party as stumbling along too slowly and getting behind the curve on important issues. All too often they accuse Republicans of differing viewpoints of not being real conservatives. The media also fails to realize that committed Republicans have held Tea Party rallies.

The problems within the GOP and conservative movement overall are relatively picayune. Libertarians and conservatives in some areas have problems with party leadership, usually more on procedural than ideological grounds. Democrats are splitting on ideological issues. Conservative Democrats fear the wrath of constituents and left wing leaders. Some have courageously split, others try to steer the rapids in the middle of the river.

Republicans need a leader to emerge as Reagan did in the 1970s. From 1976 to 1980 the GOP was split by ideological differences. "Moderates" such as Nelson Rockefeller battled Goldwater inspired small government conservatives such as Ronald Reagan. Reagan understood the anger he shared with the American people, but channeled it into a specific vision of a brighter future rather than simply dislike of Jimmy Carter.

Where will that leader come from? The same model should succeed in 2012 as in 1980. Whoever it is needs to step forth and help inspire party loyalists and those that are simply mad as hell at the movement away from true American values.

Troops In Afghanistan Face More Restrictions Than Your County Sheriff

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/16/us-troops-battle-taliban-afghan-rules/print/

This article is almost a month old, but worthy of mention for anyone with loved ones in Afghanistan, as my family has.

It speaks for itself but fails to point out an important salient fact. Your county sheriff, or any other law enforcement officer in the US, has more latitude in fighting crime than Army and Marine officers have in fighting terrorism.

I understand the problems involved in counterinsurgency from an academic standpoint, having researched and delivered papers on the subject. There must be an understanding of the population's role. However you must make the population feel secure to get them on your side. These rules of engagement would seem to weaken the US military's ability to offer that kind of security.

Guest Commentary: And Another Thing....

Hey y'all. Fatcat here again, Obama and the Commie left's favorite whipping boy.

Yesterday we talked about how Obama likes to rip on fat cats to score political points. A little mouse told me, before I ate him, that Obama was not literally talking about cats. Apparently that is a term they use for businessmen and heads of banks and whatnot. Now it all makes sense! Or does it?
Okay let me try and make sense of all this. You (the government) offer banks loans to bail them out because they made dumb decisions that, for the most part you had either been strongly encouraging them or forcing them to make. Of course some of them compounded that by making a lot of stupid decisions all by themselves. These decisions, made at your behest, screwed up the world's financial system. Now you give them bailout money instead of letting them go down the drain, probably because if you did not give them the money, they would reveal just how big a role that you (the government again) helped to screw everything up.

So they make decisions you don't like and now you want to force them to, once again, abide by the political needs of the government instead of the needs of who they are really accountable to, customers and shareholders.

Meanwhile the executive branch and the army of czars have not figured out one idea that actually worked because, surprise, there is no one there that has the ear of the president who has any knowledge of how a free market system actually works!

Take some advice from a real fat cat. Get your hands off the banks, General Motors, etc. Stop buying the support of NBC through cap and trade intercourse with their parent company, General Electric. Let companies rise and fall by their own merits. The free market system works if you let it. Half a$$#d socialism only creates an economy that works at a mediocre level because no one is sure what political whim will next sweep through the system.

If anyone out there wants to blame fat cats, don't blame capitalism and don't blame me. neither one of us had anything to do with what is going on now. We have met our economic enemy and once again it's the flipping government. Oh and guess what. The inflation that is coming? That's the government's fault too! It spends too much!

Fat cat signing off!

Why Is This Man Still In the Executive Branch?

Warning (seriously) the following link has graphic and fairly disgusting material within that relates promotion of bizarre sexual practices to young boys and girls with the "Safe Schools Czar" appointed by Obama

http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/09/fistgate-iii-obamas-safe-schools-czars-black-book-for-kids-included-tips-on-fisting-and-piing-on-your-partner/

Where does Barack Obama find people like Kevin Jennings? Seriously! It is almost as if he looked for the scuzziest and nastiest people on Earth to serve as his top advisors. And this guy has authority over federal school policy!!!!

If you read the link, you know that Jennings is a man who should never be allowed within a thousand yards of a school, much less serve as an educational advisor to the president. These conventions should be as carefully attended by FBI agents as pro Klan churches were during the civil rights movement. After all, they promote child molestation.

This is an issue that is kind of scary. This guy has written books proudly proclaiming that he encouraged young schoolage boys to have sex with older men in bus stations, but only if they wore a condom. To me if it walks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, a duck it most likely is. If this guy thinks molesting teenage boys is A-OK and is brazen enough to write a book about promoting it (isn't THAT a crime?), I doubt it would take much digging to find a serious felony in his past.

A conservative and a golf star cheat on their wives and it is big news. Obama appoints a guy that promotes child molestation and no one utters a peep. Am I missing something?

The thought that a child molestor currently serves as Obama's top advisor on education is chilling. No one has ever said he actually molested a boy, but he has repeatedly stated that there is nothing wrong with it. And that is horrifying enough.

Irony, Global Warming Style . . .

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,663858,00.html

If they were not so dangerous, this would be hysterical.

Guest Commentary: A Response to Barack Obama

Hi America. I'm mad as H ee double hockey sticks and I am not going to take it anymore!

Every darned time some liberal or left wing pinko Commie gets a bee in his bonnet about the business cycle or banks or just rich people in general, they attack me. Why? What do they have against me? What you see right here is what you get. I'm not rich. I'm sleeping on a #$!%&!% pizza box for crying out loud. Sometimes I stretch out in the driveway too. It's not like I spend twenty hours a day worrying about the profitability of a multibillion dollar corporation or somwething like that.

Yeah I know what you are saying. You may spend 23 and 1/2 hours a day asleep somewhere and the rest eating, a lot like many of the folks who receive redistribution of wealth, but are all fat cats like you? Of course not. Some fat cats knock $#!& off the counter and break it because they are unaware of their girth. Others do their business in the clean laundry basket instead of in the litter box. My point is that we may all be fat cats, but most of us know how to behave. Liberals and lefties love to assign stereotypes that are not accurate, yet elicit an emotional response (yes I said elicit, you got a problem with that? I may have no opposable digits, but I ain't dumb.) Of course when conservatives suggest that we may want to keep our eyes on the guy rocking back and forth in the airport whispering Allah Akhbar over and over, wearing a trenchcoat in summer over a suspicious bulge in his stomach, they scream "profiling! stereotype!" But when they want to stick all us decent fat cats in the same boat as the one that poops on your foot while you are asleep in bed that is apparently perfectly alright.

So Obama, you go on bashing fat cats on your weekly radio speech that is carried on no radio station I ever heard of, but MSNBC seems to have playing constantly. I'll live my life. Just quit profiling me and my friends. Don't dump the good in with the bad just to get an emotional political response. That's irresponsible. Even a cat knows that.

Medical Marijuana

This is another one of those posts that comes with a caveat of "opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of everyone at Potomac Highlands Conservative, etc. etc. etc."

However, with that caveat in mind, the time has come to consider the positives of introducing some form of marijauna for medical use.

In 2003 almost five million people reported using opiate pain medication for "non medical purposes" according to a National Institute in Drug Addiction study. (In comparison, experts believe that two million people have a cocaine addiction.) Now this number has certainly A) risen sharply in the past six years and B) was underreported to begin with because a lot of people do not like admitting to this kind of behavior. Opiates include darvocet, percocet, oxycontin and other pills derived from opium.

For anyone, opium based drugs are highly physically addictive. All too many people have a predisposition towards addiction that makes them highly vulnerable to the "high" created by these medications. Mix a vulnerable person, physically or emotionally, with a highly concentrated opiate such as oxycontin and you are sure to get an addict nearly every time.

Enter marijuana. As a medication or social drug, marijuana has a much lower physical addiction rate. Certainly the high can create emotional dependence in many cases, but that is much easier to break than the physical dependence created by opiates. Marijuana when properly used has almost the same pain killing effect as most of the opiate drugs. Getting a similar benefit with a much lower rate of desperate addiction is a strong argument in favor of legalizing marijuana for medical use. As far as abuse is concerned, misuse and addiction to opiates is rampant already. Any measure that could stem the tide of normal people growing addicted in the course of taking a legitimate prescription is a bonus for society.

Medical marijuana gives us a potential alternative to the highly addictive opiates, but the problem does not stop there. We need to reign in some of these "pain clinics" that have as much concern for their patients as Mexican drug cartels do for their customers. Doctors that knowingly hand out pills to addicts for no real medical purpose at all need to be treated in the same manner as crack or meth dealers. Their degrees and nice clothes do not make them any better than any other drug dealer. Some highly addictive drugs need to be used only in cases of terminal illness or the most severe and debilitating conditions, the kind of real pain problems that would preclude a normal life anyway.

Medical marijuana is only part of the solution to runaway pain pill addiction in this country, but it is an important step towards keeping good people from sliding down that path in the first place.

***************************************************************************

One last thing. Those of you that support this and have rallies and meetings that end up on TV, here is a public relations hint. Get rid of the long hair and beards. Wear a button down shirt, maybe even a tie. It does not help the cause of medical marijuana to have on television the Jerry Garcia look alike contest. Now I used to have a lot of friends that looked like this, maybe still do. However, seeing these people wandering around in the background of TV coverage does not advance the movement. Not trying to be mean or discriminatory, but just take it as food for thought.

It's About Time

It is about that time again. Campaign season.

Some people welcome it. Some shrink in horror. Many don't notice any difference at all until they see signs up at every road corner. Nevertheless it is almost upon us.

People involved in politics get jaded because the parties tell us every election year could be the most important ever. This year is the one that demands your time, attention, and money more than any other. We hear that every year, but this year it is true.

We are not debating abortion, gay marriage, high or low taxes, school textbooks, or other such issues this time. These definitely require attention, but they remain secondary to the question of 2010 and then 2012 after it.

This question affects our entire nation and permeates elections at every level. We must ask ourselves as we go vote what kind of nation we want. Do we want a country with a government putting its hands into every aspect of our lives, stealing the rewards of the hard working to buy the votes of the less fortunate, allowing neither to thrive? Do we want a government dominated by the United Nations, its members seeking to force America to give up competitive advantages and bankrupt itself and its people? Some in the world want to see us weakened and chastened, many of those work in the executive and legislative branches of our own government.

Most of us want a strong, prosperous, and secure America. To get that back, we must vote for people that support American values. Beyond that we cannot have the anti-socialist vote split. We must come together. Republican candidates have to clearly oppose the Obama/Pelosi plans and libertarians need to support them.

We as a people and a party must have a clear message that our nation and the wider world needs to hear. The American people are not prepared to follow Barack Obama into the dying of our light. We will vote to protect our freedom and resist tyranny. The Democratic Party leadership and the world need to understand that once and for all.