OK, this goes back well over ten years. After a particularly harsh winter (or, knowing the national media's insularity, perhaps just a single heavy blizzard in New York), Time magazine ran a cover showing some people struggling through the snowfall with a headline informing us that this, too, was a result of "Global Warming."

Even at that point (remembering the setting in which I saw the magazine, it was 1997 at the latest), anyone with eyes in his head should have been able to see that "climate change" (they hadn't yet developed the trick of calling it that) is a religion rather than science. And over a decade later, and after shoveling out yet another heavy snowfall this morning (a few weekends ago, I did it three times in one 24-hour period!), it seems that quite a few people still don't get it. Well, that's a cult for you.

"Obama: Lawmakers should put politics aside for stimulus bill" (AP)

That headline concerns me:

1. I fear our President doesn't get that there's a difference between honestly held policy views and "politics." That is, that he's a politician without any real views.

2. I fear he has views and ideology, but doesn't realize (in true Alinsky fashion) that there are many things in life outside of politics and confrontation, and that policy can be discussed in an honest manner.

3. I fear he knows all that and is just trying to use the bugaboo of "politics" to keep any real opposition from arising. (Not that politics or partisanship are always a bad thing either.)

You may change every "he" above to "He" is that's your bag.

Well, Bush has left the building...

...meaning that this legend has finally been put to rest.

Although considering the "explanation" they thought up for Reagan, I suppose they'll think of one here as well.

HaBayta

By the way, as long as I'm quoting songs, I have to say that preparing for Aliyah in weather like this really calls to mind the words of Shimon and Garfinkel:

And I'm laying out my winter clothes, wishing I was gone, goin' home

Where the New York City winters aren't bleedin' me, leadin' me to go home

Lupins

From The Corner come two postings about how Barney Fa...er, Frank has decided to allow beneficiaries of the government's bailout money (i.e., bigwig execs, although it looks like the congressmen themselves, plus some of the usual suspects, are gonna get some of that green) to keep flying their corporate jets. This is done, apparently, to protect Kansas's corporate-jet industry, and was pushed by two congressmen from that state, one from each party.

The Democrat is named Dennis Moore.

Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
Riding through the land
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
Without a merry band
He steals from the poor, and gives to the rich
... Stupid b****.

Quite apropos, eh?

Achdut

I tell ya, there's nothing that gets my Jewish happy-juices flowing better than seeing a diverse crowd at Mincha. I went to the Radio City Synagogue, in the middle of the Diamond District, yesterday, Asarah B'Tevet, as I usually do on fasts, and the usual spectrum of people were there. (Fasts, of course, bring out more people than usual, myself included, what with a Sefer Torah needed.) Satmar, Lubavitch, one clearly not-at-all religious guy whose wife needed a Mi Sheberach, and all the way to me, who some bloggers probably wouldn't even count for a minyan. I even bid for Kohen and won; twenty-six dollars well spent. The Sefer Torah was the smallest I've ever seen in my life- not more than five inches; our faces were practically right on top of it so we could read. Tehillim for "Eretz Yisroel" afterward, of course.

Perhaps the wrong emotion for a fast, but it made me feel a lot better. Perhaps, in fact, that's the most appropriate emotion indeed.