1. The Climes They Are A-Changin’

2. Reciprocal Courtesy On a Bridge Too Far

3. The Obamacare comic book!

4. “Right Now, Not Next Year, But Now”

1. The Climes They Are A-Changin’

I’m old enough to remember some pretty darn extreme weather, like Hurricane Camille, a monster Cat 5 storm that devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969. There was the Super Tornado Outbreak of April, 1974: a complex of 148 twisters that spun across hundreds of mile of the Midwest, killing 148, injuring 5,300, and wiping the town of Xenia, OH off the map. And lest we forget the record cold winter of 1977-78, when natural gas supplies ran low.

Many of our impressions of current extreme weather conditions have to do with the fact that 1) they’re fresh in our memories; 2) we have better communications and 3) higher population densities than in times past.

Complaining about extreme weather is part of the human condition. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane with The New York Times, all the way back to 1888.

Note from Erick: Folks, this is the best piece on climate change you are goin got read. You really need to check out the whole thing.

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2. Reciprocal Courtesy On a Bridge Too Far

The cool kids on twitter, the ones who think as long as they proclaim their openmindedness to ideas that have never had a place within conservatism they won’t be considered troglodytes, are all a twitter (pun intended) over GOProud going to CPAC. Most are willing to admit the group is Republican and intellectually libertarian — not conservative. But they want them to have a seat at the table. That’s all well and fine.

In fact, GOProud has largely said the same thing. It just wants a seat at the table as a team player. The cool kids on twitter and GOProud are upset and horrified that any conservative could look at the conservative political action conference and wonder how an organization like GOProud got to be a participating organization. Yes Virginia, there remains a difference between Republican and conservative.

In any event, your mileage can vary on where you stand on whether they should be or should not be at CPAC (I’d rather GOProud than the Muslim Brotherhood), but on the issue of GOProud and Tim Pawlenty, your mileage can’t really vary if we’re going to uphold one standard and some basic reciprocity.

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3. The Obamacare comic book!

Excuse me: the Obamacare graphic novel. What’s the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel? The same difference as the one between dolls and action figures, but never mind that right now. What’s important is that there’s somebody out there who feels that the ideas behind a 2,400 page monstrosity of a health bill that nobody understands and even its defenders secretly hate can be explained by literally drawing some pictures.

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4. “Right Now, Not Next Year, But Now”

Congressional Republicans are breaking their pledge to cut spending “right now, not next year, but now.”

Yet, the editors of National Review today, while swooning over the latest budget proposal of Paul Ryan (R-WI), lauded the House GOP for an “actual honest-to-God reduction in federal outlays of $32 billion.”

How about we take a look at this with an honest-to-God perspective and the ability to check blind hope for supposed “conservative heroes” at the door?

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