And to open the year we begin with, “Faith not Fear!”
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B-
Observing the immense devastation from this past weekend’s tornado outbreak jars the soul.
However, don’t blame it on climate change.
The quintet of brutal tornadoes that left a 250-mile path of demolition, beginning Friday evening into early Saturday, was part of a storm system that created widespread damage and deaths in Arkansas, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky, which was hit the hardest.
Within that storm complex the largest of the tornadoes has been categorized as an “EF3,” meaning its winds could have been ripping through at 165 mph. However, the ongoing forensic storm analysis could find that level raised to EF5, which would mean the winds were screaming at over well over 200 mph.
The last EF5 in Kentucky was during an April 3, 1974 storm, devastating the town of Brandenburg.
At a press event Saturday, President Biden was asked if he concludes, “these storms and the intensity has to do with climate changes?”
“Well,” the President replied, “all I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impact as a consequence of the warming of the planet and the climate change. The specific impact on these specific storms, I can’t say at this point.”
Biden continued, “I’m going to be asking the EPA and others to take a look at that. But the fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming — everything. And, obviously, it has some impact here, but I can’t give you a — a quantitative read on that.”
No, Mr. President. No, Ms. Media. These storms had nothing to do with climate change or global warming.
They had everything to do with a mass of unusually cold, dry air coming down from Canada, meeting a mass of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. Such an atmospheric collision is a recipe for dangerous tornadoes, even in December.
December tornadoes are not a freak occurrence. On average, about two dozen tornadoes form each December, and they’ve been known to be quite violent. Just two years ago, 40 tornadoes tore across the South on December 16 and 17, killing three people.
However, with over 100 people feared to have been killed, this past weekend’s outbreak was the deadliest on record.
Timing could have been an issue. These monsters occurred after dark. Statistically when tornadoes befall at night they are most fatal, perhaps because residents are not able to see the twister coming ahead of time and take appropriate shelter.
In an average year some 1,200 tornadoes occur in the U.S. If anything, more are reported nowadays because of the abundance of well-equipped storm chasers who are more easily able to detect such storms. Death and destruction tolls are likely higher because of increased populations and high density communities.
Prior to this storm, Kentucky’s worst tornado occurred on March 27, 1890, ravaging the Louisville area. Estimated to have been an EF4, the twister caused damage totalling $2.5 million in 1890 dollars, or approximately $7.6 billion today.
Historically, the annual frequency of U.S. tornadoes has remained relatively constant.
Here’s the real problem. Tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, forest fires and heat waves, become predictable talking points for climate change activists. Their media friends lap it up, based on the old adage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” More viewers and more clicks equal better ad buys.
Media coverage has also become a reliable spout of climate change propaganda as the editors know so well which facts to conveniently leave out.
It’s disgusting.
Meantime, non-profit climate orgs harness the scare of climate change and global warming to increase funding, while big government, elitists and one-worlders use the eco-scares it to further wealth redistribution and the transformation of the global economy into something Marx and Lenin would be so proud of.
Nevertheless, and far more importantly, our prayers go out for all those who are suffering because of this awful weather event.
Brian Sussman is the author of Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam, and Eco-Tyranny: How the Left’s Green Agenda will Dismantle America
The Supreme Court could end Roe v Wade. We must pray.
The Court’s decision will be made on Friday.
If you want to know where I stand on this, take a look at our family portrait (below).
I’m posting a summary of a wonderfully written, extensive article, on this monumental case currently before the Court. A link to the full article is found afterward.
Remember, all we need are five justices to see the light of truth.
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Roe v. Wade remains one of the most controversial judicial decisions in American history. Even after 50 years, dozens of additional abortion decisions, and an ongoing vigorous national debate, most Americans oppose most of the abortions that Roemade legal. Even the most creative legal scholars have failed to find a reasonable constitutional justification for Roe, and most have stopped trying. Roe’s abortion regime is far more permissive than the common law or statutes, in England or America, have ever provided. Lower courts have never been able consistently to discern and apply the subjective holdings in the Court’s abortion cases. And even the Court’s chosen basis for creating the right to abortion—the detriment that prohibiting abortion would impose—has been significantly undermined by dramatic economic, legal, and social changes in society and culture.
From changing public sentiment on abortion to advances in medical technology that reveal the mysteries of fetal development to expanding opportunities for women, the redefinition of their societal roles, and a wanting connection between abortion and women’s economic and social progress, it is appropriate for the Court to—as Justice Ginsburg rightly noted—follow the changes that have occurred elsewhere in society and put a halt to its misguided leadership on the issue of abortion.
Roe and Casey went beyond distorting or incorrectly interpreting the Constitution; they ignored the Constitution altogether, exceeding the judiciary’s proper authority in the process. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization provides an opportunity for the Court to correct this grave error.
https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/report/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization-opportunity-correct-grave-error
The traditional Thanksgiving meal has roots that extend back to November 1621, when the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians gathered at Plymouth (now in Massachusetts in New England) for a three-day autumn harvest celebration. This event is regarded as America’s “first Thanksgiving.”
But what was really on the menu at the famous banquet, and which of today’s time-honored favorites didn’t earn a place at the table until later in the holiday’s 400-year history?
In the book, On Plymouth Plantation, written by Mayflower traveler and the colony’s first Governor, William Bradford, we find remarks regarding the first full year’s harvest that autumn in 1621: “there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc.”
The menu would not be possible were it not for the bounty reaped with the help of their Native American neighbors. Local vegetables that likely appeared on the table included onions, beans, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, carrots and perhaps peas. Corn, which records show was plentiful at the first harvest, might also have been served, but not in the way most people enjoy it now. In those days, the corn would have been removed from the cob and turned into cornmeal, which was then boiled and pounded into a thick corn mush or porridge that was occasionally sweetened with molasses. However, the Indians did provide the settlers with a special treat that would become an American favorite forever: popcorn!
Fruits indigenous to the region included blueberries, plums, grapes, gooseberries, raspberries and, of course cranberries, which Native Americans ate and used as a natural dye. The Pilgrims might have been familiar with cranberries by the first Thanksgiving, but they wouldn’t have made sauces and relishes with the tart orbs. That’s because the sacks of sugar that traveled across the Atlantic on the Mayflower were nearly or fully depleted by November 1621. Cooks didn’t begin boiling cranberries with sugar and using the mixture as an accompaniment for meats until about 50 years later.
There may also have been seafood on the menu. Original colonist Edward Winslow wrote, “Our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter. We have mussels… at our doors. Oysters we have none near, but we can have them brought by the Indians when we will.”
And then there’s the pumpkin pie.
Both the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe ate pumpkins other squashes indigenous to New England, possibly even during the first harvest festival. But the fledgling colony lacked the butter and wheat flour necessary for making pie crust. Moreover, settlers had yet to construct an oven for baking. According to some accounts, early English settlers in North America improvised by hollowing out pumpkins, filling the shells with milk, honey and spices to make a custard, then roasting the gourds whole in hot ashes.
Whatever is on your menu, be it large, small, with or without the turkey, and perhaps void of pumpkin pie (I prefer pecan)…
HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY OF FELLOWSHIP, FOOD, AND FAITH.
When President Trump was in office his administration designated the Houthis, in the Middle East, as foreign terrorists. The Houthis are backed by the radical Islamic Republic of Iran.
Trump’s move triggering leftists across America, as well as 22 social justice groups operating in Yemen, demanding the terrorist designation be removed.
When Joe Biden took office, he did listened to their plea and did just that.
The result? Another predictable human disaster.
Yesterday the Houthis stormed the American embassy in Sana’a, Yemen, seizing “large quantities of equipment and materials.”
The attack was confirmed by the Yemeni media outlet Al-Masdar Online.
This event came only days after the Houthis kidnapped “three Yemeni nationals affiliated with the U.S. Embassy,” according to Al-Masdar.
Makes a rational person wonder what team “Brandon” is playing on?
Another reason to keep America and its enemies, both foreign and domestic, in your daily prayers.