It Is Cold!!!

Welcome to the new Ice Age! Just in case you have missed winter because you have been in a warmer climate, such as the Arctic circle for instance,those of us here in New England have been getting hammered with one snow storm after another. We are so buried in snow, that trying to get out of the driveway, to go anywhere, takes massive intestinal fortitude,skill and no small amount of craziness, along with a point man to step into the road to see if anyone is coming. Not saying it's deep or anything, but the tops of trees are starting to look like bushes and I have had some offers to rent out my snowbanks by various ski resorts.

The piece of this weather that has seems to have gotten lost in all the snow drifts is the extreme cold. It has been deadly cold across a major portion of the country, so bad in fact that Yale had to cancel, wait for it, their annual global warming protest. This post isn't about that but I have to say perhaps summer might be a better time.....

O yes back to the cold. I mention the extreme cold because, from a personal perspective, I am cold. Scratch that, my whole family is cold. Our apartment is just shy of being a freezer with uninsulated floors and leaky windows. It is so cold that we considered putting water down on the floor to freeze so we could just skate from one room to the next, saving time and allowing us some easy exercise. I am exaggerating a little but not by much.

It is however a fact that in order to stay warm we are having to wear extra clothes and shoes on our feet even while indoors because of the cold and because of the costs to heat. We have to keep it down around 62 or less during the day and turn it just above freezing so that pipes don't burst at night. We are not alone.

I talked with a friend yesterday who told me that she has to keep her temp down around 60 otherwise her heating cost would be as much as her rent and another who can't afford to heat at all so she's piling on the blankets to stay warm. This is insane.

For those of us living on fixed incomes this has been a tough winter. Imagine my joyful delight when I opened up my latest heating bill to find that it had increased by 75%. Not because we are using that much more but because they are charging us 75 percent more! Not only was that such blessed news, but then came the bonus, it is going to continue to go up for the foreseeable future. What joy! Now, not only do I get to be cold, but I get to pay a lot more for the pleasure!

Now I understand that companies need to make a profit, after all whats the point in going into business if you can't make any money at it, but a 75% increase and counting? I also understand the law of supply and demand. Right now there is a lot of demand for fuel, however,as a nation, we are not dealing with a lack of supply.

Most of the time I tend to lean towards the conservative end of the aisle when it comes to politics ( I know that comes as a complete shock) but this is one of those time where I have to reach over to the Liberal/Socialist aisle and even to my conservative brethren and suggest that we have to fix this.

There is no reason that in this country anyone should have to be cold in the winter because of price gouging and greed. Maybe I'm wrong and that's not whats happening, but if we are not lacking in fuel, and nothing else has changed, outside of it being colder, how else am I supposed to see this? Just a simple minded question.

Today Equals 1939

Today I saw the video of the Jordanian pilots brutal execution by ISIS. I thought the beheading of other hostages was bad enough but this brought this evil to a new all time low level. It was so bad that I had to turn off the volume because of the screaming. So why did I watch it you might wonder; I wanted a fresh reminder of the full blown evil that is waiting to destroy all of us because we will do nothing to stop it, by we I mean the western world, more specifically,our government. Mr. Obama makes statements, his people speak many words and still they do nothing. Sure they have been doing some bombing missions, sure we have some troops on the ground trying to train the Iraqi's, again, but we are still virtually doing nothing to stop them. Words don't matter to them, power does, and right now they are in the drivers seat of power. Does anyone really think that they couldn't be stopped by the combined forces of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, among others? Why are we letting them get away?

Does anyone here reading this remember what happened to Iran and Libya when Reagan took office? First the Iranians immediately released the hostages because they knew better than to mess with him and later we bombed the snot out of Libya. Both of those nations got very quiet for a long time after that. It was the combination of both the threat and the actual use of force, that stopped them.

Now we have a president with no backbone. He can't even bring himself to identify them as Islamic terrorists, never mind use force to stop them. He says we are doing things in a smarter way. What way is that sir? Please explain to all of us of how your policies of looking the other way are saving lives over there. I suspect that there are a couple of dead Japanese , not to mention, thousands of Muslims, as well as the pilot, that might disagree with you.

We are being told by our own government that it's wrong to offend Islam by drawing pictures of Mohammad or by telling the truth of him being such a pedophile and a mass murderer. It's perfectly OK to attack Christians and Jews but to insult Islam could get you thrown in Jail. It's OK to paint swastikas on Israels flag, or boycott them for defending their own land from Islamic terrorists, it's perfectly OK for someone to put a cross in a jar of urine and call it art but heaven forbid you draw a cartoon of Mohammad. That might earn you jail time or get you killed.

This whole mess reminds me of Neville Chamberlain getting off the plane in Britain in 1939 waving a piece of paper and saying that there wouldn't be a war with Germany because Hitler had signed that piece of paper. No one in Europe wanted to acknowledge the real danger that they faced so they turned a blind eye and 5 years later millions were dead and Europe was all but destroyed. Apparently we haven't learned.

ISIS is growing by leaps and bounds. They have money , they have sophisticated weapons, they have some of the best recruiting tools, using modern equipment, to show their horrific deeds and they have the will to kill all who stand in their way.

We need to stop this now before they start here.