NOVEMBER 20, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2015, 7:26 AM
BY ELISA UNG
THE RECORD
Upon entering the new Fish Urban Dining Ridgewood, it’s best to look up. Gazing high provides glamour and drama: ceilings that soar, dramatic chandeliers fit for a ballroom, swaths of fabric crisscrossing tall windows, intricate molding and second-floor private dining areas with lovely views of the entire scene. All perks of dining in a venerable old bank building.
But looking at your plate can be a mixed story. Over my two meals, there was a flawless bowl of raw ahi tuna poke that could have come straight from a Hawaiian luau and a bountiful, well-seasoned crab cake. But there was also a drab-looking, bitter-tasting bowl of monkfish and a plate of limp, undercooked scallops. Fish’s food has a ways to go before it matches the scenery.
Owners James and Karen DeGilio opened Fish in July in the historic landmark First National Bank and Trust Co. building on Ridgewood Avenue that was most recently home to Bank of America. Their original Fish in Asbury Park also occupies a former bank building, and when they decided to start another restaurant, they were drawn to renovate the landmark in Karen’s native Bergen County. While they won’t say how much they spent on the renovation — James admits growing “dizzy every time I say that number” — the job was clearly extensive and meticulous. Workers salvaged marble from the teller windows, which then became part of the raw bar and the bathroom vanities.
As New York City cracks down on panhandling, towns served by New Jersey Transit’s busiest rail lines are in a homelessness crisis, with a surge of people taking shelter in train stations and other public places.
Total homelessness in New Jersey has dropped 27 percent since 2011, but an increasing number of people are avoiding shelters and sleeping in areas not intended as living quarters. In Bergen, Hudson and Essex counties, thick with Manhattan commuters, the unsheltered increase is 22 percent to 86 percent. In Mercer County, where Trenton’s bus and rail station is on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, the number has more than doubled.
New York City’s homeless population, meanwhile, has soared, reaching a record of 60,670 staying in shelters in January, according to the Coalition for the Homeless, a Manhattan-based nonprofit service group. In recent weeks, Mayor Bill de Blasio has led breakups of encampments, discouraged passers-by from handing over spare change and deployed more outreach workers to push shelters.
The portion of U.S. homebuyers making their first residential purchase fell for a third straight year, and is now at the lowest level since 1987.
The share of first-time buyers dropped to 32 percent from 33 percent last year, according to a National Association of Realtors survey that covered transactions in the 12 months through June. That’s below the long-term average of almost 40 percent, the group said in its report, released Thursday.
Rising home prices are holding back many young would-be buyers who can’t easily save for a down payment because of student-loan burdens and soaring apartment rents. The median amount of student debt for all buyers was $25,000, according to the survey. And the prices of the least-expensive previously owned homes — those most likely to be bought by first-time buyers — are rising faster than those of costlier residences.
“It’s just a lack of affordable homes, especially in the starter range,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, said in a telephone interview. “At a time when housing wealth is growing, we have fewer people participating in this recovery, and that worsens wealth inequality in the U.S.”
The typical first-time buyer was 31 years old and purchased a 1,620-square-foot (150-square-meter) home costing $170,000, while repeat buyers were more than two decades older and bought a median 2,020-square-foot house costing $246,400.
MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.
FACT: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. However, the ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas (“heat islands”), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas (“land use effects”) i.e. local heat retention due to urban sprawl, not global warming…and it is these, ‘false high’ ground readings which are then programmed into the disreputable climate models used by your favourite enviro groups such as Greenpeace, which live up to the GIGO acronym — Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Looking at it from the long term, the planet has been gradually recovering from the Little Ice Age which ended in 1850. Our temps are in fact right where they should be. From a short term perspective, satellite measurements (which are far more accurate than land-based stations) are now showing a gradual decrease in global temperatures, and it is currently well accepted that temperatures have been slowly falling for over a decade now and cold records are being set far more often than warm records.
In summary, there has been no catastrophic warming recorded from either method whatsoever.
MYTH 2: It’s never been warmer in the past.
FACT: We are in a relatively cool period and it used to be much warmer over countless periods in the past. Even just a few hundred years ago, the Vikings used to live in parts of Greenland without snow, and vineyards flourished in the North of London! There is nothing apocalyptic about warmer temperatures, in fact it’s quite the opposite. In the UK, every mild winter saves 20,000 cold-related deaths, and scaled up over northern Europe mild winters save hundreds of thousands of lives each year. ALSO, data from ice core samples shows that in the past, temperatures have risen by ten times the current rise, and fallen again, in the space of a human lifetime. Nothing is happening “faster than normal” with today’s weather/climate change/temperature variations, etc.
MYTH 3: The “hockey stick” graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature decrease for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.
FACT: The hockey stick graph seen in An Inconvenient Truth and elsewhere has been completely debunked and proven fraudulent. It has airbrushed out the significant changes in climate which have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17thCentury the “average global temperature” has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare. And now the temperatures are dropping once again, in fact they’ve been dropping since 1998.
The “hockey stick”, a former poster boy of both the UN’s IPCC and Canada’s Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and is proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It has now been quietly removed from the IPCC reports and thoroughly discredited throughout the scientific world and is well regarded as one of the biggest scientific hoaxes of our time, yet you can still find it being used today by organizations such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc. The chart is a computer construct and a very faulty one at that. But what else would you expect, seeing as it was created only to help perpetrate the climate change lie.
Speaking of computer generated scams, let’s not forget the drowning polar bears in Gore’s movie and the fraudulent claim that the bears are disappearing. In fact they are actually thriving. Polar bear populations are 500% larger than they were 50 years ago. Shame on you, Al Gore, for playing on people’s emotions to drive support for your enormous $45 trillion carbon tax hoax.
MYTH 4: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.
FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO2 is a measurable driver of global warming, let alone the tiny amount released by humankind. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming.
Effectively, the man-made global warming theorists have put effect before cause — this completely debunks the entire global warming theory and shows that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a futile King Canute exercise! Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth’s oceans expel more CO2 as a result.
MYTH 5: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.
FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, about 96.5% is water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being trace gases like CO2, CH4, Ozone and N2O. CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. And then the human portion of that 0.037% is incredibly small.
But isn’t CO2 the most important of the greenhouse gases? Nope. Not even close. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, which is about 100 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2 and thus has a much larger effect.
In summary, water vapour is by far the most important and overwhelming greenhouse gas. Those attributing climate change to CO2 rarely mention these important facts.
What’s next? A steam tax when you boil a kettle for your cup of tea?
MYTH 6: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.
FACT: The computer models assume that CO2 is the primary climate driver, when in fact CO2 does not drive climate, and they do not take into account the Sun, which has the most significant effect on climate. You cannot use the output of a model to verify or prove its initial assumption – that is circular reasoning and is illogical. Computer models can be made to roughly match the 20th century temperature rise by adjusting many input parameters and using strong positive feedbacks. They do not “prove” anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO2. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover. Again, models are in essence: GARBAGE IN = GARBAGE OUT. (Maybe they should also take note that when the Earth warms, so do other planets in our solar system. Now please explain how CO2 can cause that?!)
MYTH 7: The UN proved that man–made CO2 causes global warming.
FACT: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1) “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2) “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”
Scientists draft reports for the IPCC, but the IPCC are bureaucrats appointed by governments, in fact many scientists who contribute to the reports disagree with the ’spin’ that the IPCC and media put on their findings. The latest report suggests that the next 100 years might see a temperature change of 6 Celsius yet a Lead Author for the IPCC (Dr John Christy UAH/NASA) has pointed out that the scenarios with the fastest warming rates were added to the report at a late stage, at the request of a few governments (to create urgency) — in other words the scientists were told what to do by politicians and many of them strongly disagree. This is not science. It’s political propaganda.
To the present day there is still no scientific proof that man-made CO2 has any effect on global warming or can cause “climate change”. However, there is plenty of scientific proof that the Earth has been cooling while CO2 has risen, and that increased CO2 is very beneficial to our planet.
MYTH 8: Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant.
FACT: This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is. CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has included CO2 with a number of truly toxic and noxious substances listed by the Environmental Protection Act, only as their means to politically control it. In the US, president Obama is also trying to classify CO2 as a “pollutant” for the same political reasons. It’s really quite terrifying and is a slap in the face to science.
MYTH 9: Reducing car use will cut carbon dioxide levels and save the planet!
FACT: The planet does not need saving from this mythical problem of CO2 emissions from cars, but taking this on anyway, removing every car from every road in every country overnight would NOT produce any change in the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere, and in any case it is pointless trying to alter climate by changing carbon dioxide levels as the cause and effect is the other way round! — It is changes in the activity of the Sun that cause temperature changes on earth, with any temperature rise causing carbon dioxide to de-gas from the oceans.
MYTH 10: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.
FACT: There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims on a global scale. Regional variations may occur, and always do. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting. Weather records clearly show there has been adecrease in violent and extreme weather over the past century.
Extreme weather correlates with the cycle of solar activity, not carbon dioxide emissions or political elections. The recent heavy rainfall in winter and spring is a perfect example of this — it occurred at solar maximum at a time when solar maxima are very intense — this pattern may well repeat every 11 years until about 2045. Furthermore, the hottest and coldest days on record occurred more than 60 years ago (before industry) and the wackiest most extreme weather recorded over the last 100 years, including the strongest hurricanes, and devastating droughts/floods, all occurred in the 1940’s. And guess what? They will always happen, every year, with new records set daily. Normal.
Contrary to media hysteria claiming increasing storm severities, scientists have studied this issue and come to the opposite conclusion: extreme events are becoming LESS common. Atlantic hurricanes were much more numerous from 1950 to 1975 than from 1975 to present. Hailstorms in the US are 35% less common than they were fifty years ago. Extreme rainfall in the US at the end of the 20th century is comparable to what it was at the beginning of the 20th century. Also, there is much empirical evidence to suggest that when global warming does happen from time to time, more warmth generally leads to a more stable climate with less weather extremes. Once again, the greenies got it backwards.
MYTH 11: Carbon taxes, petrol duty, and workplace parking charges are justifiable environmental taxes.
FACT: As carbon dioxide emissions from cars and factories does not have any impact on climate, these taxes are ‘just another tax’ on enterprise and mobility, and have no real green credentials. None.
MYTH 12: Global warming must be real since governments are trying to cover it up and I see protests all the time!
FACT: It’s exactly the opposite. Governments everywhere are not only active supporters of the climate change lie, they are promoters of it and massively fund it. And they’ve done an absolutely brilliant job of it by easily convincing the world’s alarmists and Earth-conscientious citizens of an impending catastrophe, thereby utilizing the protesters and subsequent immense political pressure to push through the very policies they aspire to implement on all of us. Governments have learned the power of activism ever since the days of the revolution, and they’ve managed to use it to their advantage. Extremist environmentalists have been duped into becoming a tool for the very governments they believe they’re “fighting” against. A recent example of this was the declaration by Al Gore and James Hansen which encouraged activists to consider civil disobedience to stop the construction of new coal power plants.
In defense of many environmentalists and “cause-jumpers”, quite often they simply do not know any better but are actually well intentioned.
MYTH 13: Receding glaciers, the calving of ice shelves, and the shrinking of snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro are proof of global warming.
FACT: Glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It’s normal. Besides, glacier’s health is dependent as much on precipitation as on temperature. What you see on your television newscasts are images of the annual summer melt off, which happens every single year and is nothing to worry about.
Global warming is not melting Mt. Kilimanjaro’s alpine glacier. Temperatures at Mt. Kilimanjaro have been slightly cooling since at least the middle of the twentieth century, and those temperatures virtually never rise above freezing. Scientists have long known that deforestation at the base of the mountain is causing the mountaintop glacier to shrink, by reducing the moisture and resultant precipitation in mountain updrafts.
MYTH 14: The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.
FACT: The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be gotten somewhat warmer last century, due to unrelated cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. And now the western Arctic is cooling again. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica.
Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise.
MYTH 15: There are only a tiny handful of maverick scientists who dispute that man-made global warming theory is true.
FACT: There are literally tens of thousands of signatures from scientists worldwide on many petitions, ranging from the Oregon Petition Project, the Manhattan Declaration, all the way to the Leipzig Declaration which all state that there is no evidence for the man-made global warming theory nor is there any impact from mankind’s activities on climate. Many scientists are now dissenting against Al Gore and the IPCC and strongly believe that the Kyoto agreement is a total waste of time, expensive, dangerous and one of the biggest political scams ever perpetrated on the public … as H L Mencken said “The fundamental aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary” … the desire to save the world usually fronts a desire to rule it. Of the scientists who support the climate change theory, many are on payrolls of government agencies and others are simply securing their funding. The consensus is clear: Man-made climate change is a hoax.
THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
Over 95 percent of the Greenhouse Effect is the result of atmospheric water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere. But because water droplets held in suspension (clouds) make almost as good a reflector as they do a thermal insulator, there is little rise in daytime temperatures due to the Greenhouse Effect.
Any greenhouse warming, if it does occur, is limited to primarily increasing nighttime temperatures, which provides beneficial moderation of nighttime low temperatures, but no increase in daytime high temperatures.
Did you know…
Although the biggest source of greenhouse gas is our oceans, the world’s natural wetlands also produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined. Furthermore, Animals and volcanoes produce so much CO2 that it completely dwarfs mankinds insignificantly tiny emissions.
To summarize what we have learned so far:
Climate changes are not driven by CO2.
Air pollution has nothing to do with CO2.
Human-produced CO2 is a miniscule fraction of a percentage of greenhouse gases.
96.5% of all greenhouse gases emit from the oceans, naturally.
The small amount of CO2 produced by humans is wholly beneficial to the planet.
Without CO2, vegetation dies, herbivores die, you die.
CO2 levels used to be much higher many times in the past.
Higher temperatures from the sun result in CO2 levels rising long afterwards.
Rising CO2 is an effect of global warming, not a cause.
Global warming and cooling is a purely natural phenomenon.
The higher the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, the greener our planet becomes.
Forests and plant life growth has increased by approx 40% over the last 50 years, thanks to CO2.
Increasing CO2 yields larger food crops. This is beneficial to a growing population.
The Earth is not currently warming, it is in fact cooling.
Temperatures in the past have often been much warmer than today.
Even if it were to happen, a warmer Earth is far better than a colder one, for all life.
Many scientists believe we are on the cuss of the next little ice age.
When the planet warms and cools it is due to the sun. Not your car.
Polar ice is now at record levels and still growing.
Climate changes happen all the time, and have occurred much faster than anything in modern times.
There has been no increase in extreme weather. In fact, records show the exact opposite.
So don’t panic. You’re NOT at fault!
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S. Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
Former President Clinton, Al Gore, Obama and others have often cited a letter signed by 2600 scientists that global warming will have catastrophic effects on humanity. Thanks to Citizens for a Sound Economy, we know now that fewer than 10 percent of these “scientists” know anything about climate. Among the signers: a plastic surgeon, two landscape architects, a hotel administrator, a gynecologist, seven sociologists, a linguist, and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. We also now know that many of the few actual scientists on that panel are not asked whether they agree with the UN’s asessments, and many of them vehemently disagree and have thus asked to have their names removed from that fraudulent list. Global Warming Treaty is All Pain, NoGain — Malcom Wallop
“When a bureaucracy’s reason for existence is threatened, it typically generates new missions.”Desperately Seeking Mission: Why the State Department’s Gone Green — Peter VanDoren
With the release of Al Gore’s propaganda movie An Inconvenient Truth and with the help of the media the public has been driven into a mass hysteria based not on science but lies. The movie has been completely debunkedand the junk science used by extremists is exactly that: junk.
You will learn that there is no empirical evidence that man-made CO2 is a cause of temperature increases. It is, in fact, an after effect of temperature increases. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant, pollution has nothing to do with global warming, politicians who support such absurd notions are a fraud, there is no “consensus” on global warming, the Earth has been far warmer in the past than it is today, polar bears are not endangered or dying, they are thriving, droughts and hurricanes are not caused or made worse by global warming, extreme weather events are decreasing, and there is extensive evidence of the factual natural causes of global warming when it really happens from time to time, pointing squarely at increased solar activity and orbital variations.
Those who claim that skeptics are in bed with the oil companies or receive funding from questionable sources need to give their heads a shake and look at the facts. Funding and grants to PROMOTE the climate change myth are astronomical, while money for the skeptics is pocket change:
Debunkers of the global warming theory have received approx = $21M (Million).
Supporters of the global warming theory have received approx = $79B (BILLION!)
Many people want a piece of that $79 billion pie, and the figure will only get higher so long as these groups can continue to convince the populous that the end is near unless we all start paying to emit that evil CO2! Don’t you find it odd that nearly nobody ever accuses the giant Enviro groups of being in bed with the large Green Industry? Or that Al Gore has boatloads of his own cash on the line in these companies? Every environmental, political, and research group knows full well that in order to receive funding and grants they need to create urgency and panic. Money then flows in like a river, regardless of actual science. It’s a sad fact.
https://www.iloveco2.com/2009/01/top-15-climate-myths.html
It is better to trust scientists than politicans. Do not let fear ruin your day. Learn the Facts.
There are several motives for the media and politicians to lie to you about global warming, aside from money and control.
~The media sells more papers, magazines, and television ratings soar when their audience is scared of some imminent catastrophe that your respective service is reporting on. Although, they can’t decide whether we’re going to burn to death, freeze to death, or drown. https://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759
~Environmental organizations and some scientists will lie to you because their funding depends on it. If theres no crisis to work through, then they start losing funding. This is well documented.
https://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/von_Storch/staged_angst/a_climate_of_staged_angst.html
~Foreign countries are lying to us (by means of the IPCC) because they wish to throw a monkey wrench into the inner workings of western economies, which are the strongest in the world. If our economy slows down, the economic standing of other countries improves because we will no longer dominate the markets.
~Development and industrialization of third world countries will be stamped out, along with hundreds of millions of lives, all under the guise of “saving the planet from climate change”. It’s absolutely sickening. So, who’s really on the “immoral” side? Us or the alarmists?
~Wanna talk about new taxes and restricted freedoms? Try carbon taxes on everything and strict regulations for everyone….all coming soon by convincing you that CO2 & greenhouse gases are somehow evil and you must pay to emit them. Too bad they can’t tax the oceans since they are the cause of 96.5% of all greenhouse emissions, naturally, eh! Also too bad they can’t go back in time and tax the dinosaurs since CO2 levels were MUCH higher back then and it must have been their fault.
The motives for deception are there. Do your part to fight alarmism!
“It is the greatest deception in history and the extent of the damage has yet to be exposed and measured,” says Dr. Tim Ball in his new book, “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science”.
Dr. Ball has been a climatologist for more than forty years and was one of the earliest critics of the global warming hoax that was initiated by the United Nations environmental program that was established in 1972 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established in 1988.
Several UN conferences set in motion the hoax that is based on the assertion that carbon dioxide (CO2) was causing a dramatic surge in heating the Earth. IPCC reports have continued to spread this lie through their summaries for policy makers that influenced policies that have caused nations worldwide to spend billions to reduce and restrict CO2 emissions.
Manmade climate change—called anthropogenic global warming—continues to be the message though mankind plays no role whatever.
If you’re having trouble understanding the phenomenal rise of Donald Trump, buck up — you’re not alone. Even political pros are dumbfounded.
They were shocked when the reality-TV star and businessman first grabbed the lead in national GOP polls. Now they’re double shocked as he soars in primary states, grabbing a 24-point lead in New Hampshire and a 15-point lead in South Carolina.
In one survey, Trump more than doubled his favorability ratings among Republicans in a single month, from 20 percent to 52 percent. The Hill newspaper called the turnaround “political magic” and the poll’s director, Patrick Murray of Monmouth University, called it “astounding.”
“That defies any rule in presidential politics that I’ve ever seen,” Murray told The Hill.
Other pollsters made similar comments, but a closer look shows an explanation. I call it the Pendulum Factor.
It reflects the fact that the legacy of each president includes the political climate he leaves behind. In plain English, Barack Obama’s most important failures as a leader begat Donald Trump’s success.
A favorable legacy among voters generally means the public wants more of the same in the next president. The clearest example is that Vice President George H.W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan in 1988, an election widely regarded as Reagan’s third term.
On the other hand, George W. Bush narrowly defeated Vice President Al Gore in 2000, a disputed election that was nonetheless seen as a repudiation of the scandal-scarred Bill Clinton era.
shington (CNN)Vice President Joe Biden fares better against top GOP candidates in hypothetical general election match-ups than Hillary Clinton, according to a new national survey.
The Quinnipiac University poll, released Thursday, also shows Donald Trump smashing the GOP presidential competition garnering 28% support from registered Republican voters in the 17-member field. The real estate mogul’s closest competitor is retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who tallies 12%.
Just 7% said they would vote for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a record low since November 2013.
Those results show just how far both Trump — now the Republican front-runner — and Bush — the old one — have come. Bush led national polls for much of the first half of 2015, but was quickly dislodged by Trump, after he announced his presidential ambitions this June.
Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida both are tied with Bush at 7%, the polls shows, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at 6% and former tech CEO Carly Fiorina and Ohio Gov. John Kasich tied at 5%.
“Donald Trump soars; Ben Carson rises; Jeb Bush slips and some GOP hopefuls seem to disappear,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the survey. “Trump proves you don’t have to be loved by everyone, just by enough Republicans to lead the GOP pack.”
And Trump certainly isn’t loved by everyone, the survey shows. About 1-in-4 GOP voters say they would never vote for Trump, topping the field. Bush comes in second with 18%.
Clinton still leads the Democratic race at 45% support from registered Democrats, followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 22% and Biden — who is currently mulling a 2016 bid — at 18%.
But Biden, currently sporting the highest favorability rating among any 2016 candidates polled of either party, tops Trump 48% to 40%, compared to Clinton, who beats Trump 45% to 41%. Biden also beats Bush, 45% to 39%, compared to Clinton, who beats Bush 42% to 40%.
The trendy nutritional advice that’s more likely to make you ill than healthy
Isabel Hardman and Lara Prendergast 22 August 2015
The supermarket aisle has become a confusing place. It used to be full of recognisable items like cheese and butter; now you find yourself bamboozled by all manner of odd alternatives such as ‘raw’ hummus, wheat-free bread and murky juices. You have to stay pretty alert to make sure you pick up a pint of proper milk, rather than a soy-based alternative or one free from lactose. Supermarkets have become shrines to ‘clean eating’, a faith that promises happiness, healthiness and energy. Food is to be worshipped — and feared.
As with all growing religions, you know it by its disciples. On The Great British Bake Off, one contestant, Ugne Bubnaityte, has denounced cake as a ‘nutritional sin’ and she hopes to win with low-fat, vegan and gluten-free recipes. Commercially, she’s on to a winner: the market for gluten-free food is soaring and is forecast to grow by 46 per cent, to £560 million, within two years. For those who can’t wait, there’s always the NHS, which wrote 211,200 prescriptions for low-protein or gluten-free food last year (including cakes and pizza). As Dr James Cave, editor of the Drugs & Therapeutics Bulletin, puts it, the NHS is ‘acting as bakers and grocers’.
The high priestesses of this new religion are a group of young, attractive women who amass hundreds of thousands of followers online as more and more people turn to them for guidance. Essentially recipe bloggers, they are becoming revered for telling us what to eat and what not to eat. In an age of confusion, they seem to offer a path.
There’s 25-year-old Madeleine Shaw, a ‘holistic nutritional health coach’ who believes in ‘enlivening the hottest, happiest and healthiest you’ and offers a ‘chia seed egg substitute’ to use in recipes. Ella Woodward, 23, bounced back from a rare illness after adopting a new plant-based diet and entices her followers with sweet potato brownies. Tess Ward, 23, has written a cookbook called The Naked Diet which replaces the conventional chapter headings — ‘Breakfasts’, ‘Starters’, ‘Mains’, ‘Puddings’ —with ‘Pure’, ‘Raw’, ‘Stripped’, ‘Clean’ and ‘Detox’. And there’s the Hemsley sisters, Jasmine and Melissa, whose bestselling cookbook The Art of Eating Well contains no recipes with grains, gluten or refined sugar.
Woodward recommends raw, rather than pasteurised, coconut water, which is tinted pink ‘because of all those antioxidants’ and warns about the dangers of dairy. Milk, she says, ‘can actually cause calcium loss in our bones! This is because milk causes the pH of our bodies to become acidic which triggers a natural reaction in our bodies to bring the pH of our blood back to neutral’. When we drink milk, she says, calcium is drawn from our bones in order to rebalance the acidity it causes, which can result in a calcium deficit.
I admit that I share in the sense of revulsion that has gripped many of my fellow Americans, not all vegetarians, who cried out after news broke that dweeby 55-year-old Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer last month traveled to the African nation of Zimbabwe and murdered Cecil, a famous and beloved lion, in an illegal hunt.
“Is it that difficult for you to get an erection that you need to kill things?’’ late-night TV show host Jimmy Kimmel asked on air, tearing up theatrically — and playing the upsetting slaying of a 13-year-old lion for laughs. Actress Mia Farrow led the Internet equivalent of a pitchfork-and-torch charge by tweeting out (then deleting) the tooth man’s business address.
Palmer has soared to the top of the most-reviled humans list, a slot that, one would think, should be occupied by a human-child-killer rather than a lion-killer. But the king of the jungle benefits roaringly from a superior public-relations strategy. Now Palmer is the hunted, living in hiding, his practice closed. He’s forced to hire ex-cops to protect his Florida vacation house
from vandals who’ve spray-painted the words “LION Killer!’’ on the garage door and dumped pickled pigs’ feet in the driveway.
Do the severe punishments — probable financial ruin, effective exile from society, and Zimbabwean officials’ attempts to extradite him for criminal prosecution — fit the offense?
Sure — if you believe that all living beings, from furry critters to the despicable dentist — have the absolute right to live long and comfortable lives.
But how many of us eat meat, despite the well-documented animal-suffering in slaughterhouses? How many of us wear leather shoes, jackets and belts? How many of us have hunted deer? (Well, not me, but . . . )
Poll: Donald Trump takes double-digit lead over the GOP presidential field
The Pundits Seem to under estimate how much the base hates McCain
POSTED 2:59 PM, JULY 20, 2015, BY CNN AND AARON HEPKER, UPDATED AT 04:14PM, JULY 20, 2015
AMES, Iowa – Donald Trump ignited a political furor with his weekend comments about Sen. John McCain’s war record, but the first polling released since then shows no change in his standing.
A Monmouth University poll of Iowans released Monday and conducted over the weekend showed Scott Walker continues to maintain a solid lead in the Iowa Republican caucus, though Trump has gained an edge over the rest of the field and now stands alone in second place.
Of likely caucus attendees, 22% told pollsters that they’d support the Wisconsin governor in next winter’s matchup, but 13% said they would back Trump, who has suddenly catapulted to the front of some national polls. Trump only earned 4% of Republicans’ support in a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg survey conducted in May, a month before Trump announced his campaign and made a string of controversial comments that came alongside his rise.
Poll: Donald Trump takes double-digit lead over the GOP presidential field
By Neetzan Zimmerman
Donald Trump is soaring over his GOP rivals in a new nationwide Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted amid his controversial comments about Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) “war hero” status.
According to the just-released poll, Trump — with 24 percent support among likely Republican voters — holds a comfortable, double-digit lead over nearest competitor Scott Walker, who captures 13 percent support.
Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Sen. Marco Rubio round up the top 5 with 12, 8, and 7 percentage points of support, respectively. Sen. Rand Paul, meanwhile, sits in sixth place with 5 percentage points.
Despite his seemingly frontrunner-like numbersand a significant 20 point bump since the lastWashington Post/ABC News poll was taken in May, the poll’s authors said Trump suffered a considerable drop following his remarks about McCain on Saturday.
JULY 19, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JULY 19, 2015, 12:13 AM
BY RICHARD NEWMAN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
The number of New Jersey home repossessions by lenders has soared in the past two years and is on track to increase again in 2015, in sharp divergence to the national trend.
Completed foreclosures, where banks and mortgage companies have taken the homes, climbed 34 percent in the state last year, to about 5,780, after an 11 percent surge in 2013, according to The Record’s analysis of RealtyTrac data. By contrast, on the national level, completed foreclosures fell by double digits in each of the past three years.
In the first three months of this year, Bergen County was on pace to nearly double last year’s total of sheriff’s auction sales with 201 properties sold.
A CoreLogic report released Tuesday showed that in May 4.9 percent of mortgaged homes in New Jersey were completed foreclosures, the top rate in the country. The percentage of homes where the mortgages are seriously delinquent also was the highest at 8.4 percent.
The statistics indicate the foreclosure debacle, which has eased in other states following the housing meltdown that began in 2007, may only now be peaking in New Jersey, where foreclosures had been crawling through the system.
Hillary Clinton’s record as secretary of state became a hot-button issue this week after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Bloomberg Television that the Barack Obama administration’s failed “reset” policy with Moscow was her “invention.”
Here’s why it matters: Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, gave an interview to Bloomberg View’s Al Hunt in April in which he said holding up the “major accomplishments” from her State Department tenure would be a centerpiece of her campaign. Podesta may want to reconsider that plan. Running on Clinton’s signature diplomatic initiatives is fraught with risks because, on closer inspection, most that he mentioned don’t hold up to scrutiny.
“She put together that sanctions package that’s led to at least the possibility of having a deal on the Iran nuclear program,” Podesta told Hunt in the interview, which was aired on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show. “That took very careful and longtime careful diplomacy.”
In fact, the State Department under Clinton vigorously opposed almost all of the Iran sanctions passed by Congress while she was in office. Top officials, including Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, openly advocated against many bills, including the sanctions on Iran’s central bank, which dealt the true crippling blow to the Tehran regime. The Senate passed that bill 100-0 and Obama reluctantly signed them into law. The State Department did implement them, but was criticized by lawmakers and advocacy groups for using waivers in the law to exempt several countries, including China and our allies Japan and South Korea.
Clinton can also expect to be pressed during the campaign over her involvement in the secret negotiations that led to the controversial Iran nuclear negotiations now nearing completion. Her deputy, William Burns, and her top foreign policy advisor, Jake Sullivan, heldmonths of clandestine meetings with Iranian officials to set up the talks. In the run-up to her campaign announcement, Clinton wascautiously supportive of the nuclear talks; leaving herself some wiggle room by saying she won’t render a final judgment until the deal is done.
Podesta then went on to say that Clinton “restored America’s place in the world, which had been very badly battered through the previous administration.”
While it’s true that global opinion of the U.S. soared when Barack Obama was first elected president, during Clinton’s State Department tenure of 2009 to 2013 there was no measurable upswing in foreigners’ views of America, according to the Pew Research Center’s polling on global attitudes. In most major countries, approval of the U.S. actually went down by the time Clinton left office, including by 11 percentage points in each of France, Germany and the U.K.
A poll conducted in 33 countries by the BBC World Service just after Clinton stepped down as secretary found that overall world opinion of the U.S. by 2013 was the lowest since the presidency of George W. Bush. If Clinton wants to run on having polished America’s image abroad, she’ll be hard pressed to come up with data to back it up.
“She engineered the so-called ‘pivot to Asia,’ ” Podesta continued. “Her first trip was to China.”
Clinton did lead parts of what the White House now calls the “rebalance” to Asia, but as Governor Scott Walker, a top Republican contender, pointed out last week, that policy has fallen well short of expectations. With China building fake islands around the South China Sea and threatening to enforce an air-exclusion zone in the area, the pivot policy now looks inadequate.
Along with Treasury Department officials, Clinton initiated a newstrategic dialogue with China, but after several high-level summits, the effort has produced few if any tangible results. The State Department did succeed in creating an opening with Myanmar, an effort led by her top Asia official, Kurt Campbell. Unfortunately, the military junta has not eased up its brutal persecution of Muslim minorities, leading to a vast refugee crisis in Southeast Asia, and political reform has now slowed to a crawl.
“She put some new issues on the table for American diplomacy,” Podesta went on, “including internet freedom, the importance of women’s rights as human rights, of LGBT rights as human rights, as part of our diplomatic package, which I think restored values to the way America projects its power around the world.”
This is hard to square with the fact that, in her first visit to China, Clinton insisted that human rights advocacy “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.” Clinton’s State Department repeatedly waived lawsthat would have cut aid to countries guilty of gross human rights violations, such as Egypt. This record won’t be helped by Clinton’s family foundation having taken millions of dollars from foreign governments that systematically abuse their citizens and deny basic liberties to women.
[ObamaCare] is working…We haven’t had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them have come to pass. You got 16 million people who’ve gotten health insurance.
It hasn’t had an adverse effect on people who already had health insurance. The overwhelming majority of them are satisfied with the health insurance…
The costs have come in substantially lower than even our estimates about how much it would cost. Health care inflation overall has continued to be at some of the lowest levels in 50 years. None of the predictions about how this wouldn’t work have come to pass.
Barack Obama, June 8, 2015
Sometimes it seems President Obama lives in a parallel universe where facts are floating around to be plucked out of suspended animation. Never more so than on the effects of the Affordable Care Act.
So let’s see whether anything he says on the new law, including that it “is working,” comports with the facts:
● No “adverse effect on people who already had health insurance.”
In 2013, as Obamacare’s policies were phasing in, nearly 5 million policyholders across 31 states and the District of Columbia were notified that their current coverage was being discontinued. This doesn’t include nearly 20 states that weren’t tracking these numbers so the total could have been several million more. In California alone, 1.1 million policies were canceled.
In March, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that Obamacare will result in a total of 1 million fewer people enrolled in employment-based coverage in 2015, increasing to 8 million fewer enrolled in employment-based covered by 2018. That’s a lot of people who haven’t been able to keep the health insurance that they like.
● “The overwhelming majority of people are satisfied” with the new law.
Real Clear Politics has reviewed the major polling results on ObamaCare over the last two months. It finds that the average result is that 43% of Americans support the law and 53% oppose it. AMay Gallup poll found more than twice as many respondents (24%) say the law has hurt their families than say it has helped them (10%). Most say it has made no difference. This sounds a lot more like dissatisfaction with the new law.
● “Health care inflation overall has continued to be at some of the lowest levels in 50 years.”
Oh really. The costs to Americans for health insurance in the new ObamaCare era are soaring across the country. The latest numbers for premium increases show the following dismal news for families. In California, approved rate increases going into effect this year are running up an average of about 10%, or five times the rate of inflation (which actually turned negative in the most recent 12 months). In Florida, 33 of 36 approved rate hikes were greater than 10%.
Next year might be even worse. In Ohio, the average rate increase request for 2016 is 17.8% as of June 9, 2015. In Virginia, the AETNA Life Insurance Company small group plan proposed an increase of 59.71%. In Texas, more than half of the rate hike request are greater than 20%. In Illinois, the popular Blue Cross Blue Shield Preferred Individual plan wants a 38% rate hike. Numerous other plans costs will rise by 50%.
● “We haven’t had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them have come to pass.”
President Obama must not listen to young people. An analysis by my colleagues Ed Haislmaier and Drew Gonshorowski at The Heritage Foundation finds that removing ObamaCare regulations for those in their early 20s would lower health insurance by 44%. Much of this cost differential stems directly from the arbitrary ObamaCare mandate that age related variations in health care premiums not exceed a ration of 3:1. That part of the law alone increased premiums for young adults by one-third. The typical 21 year old would save about $1,100 in premiums by jettisoning the regulations.
U.S. producer prices in May recorded their biggest increase in more than 2-1/2 years as the cost of gasoline and food rose, suggesting that an oil-driven downward drift in prices was nearing an end.
The Labor Department said on Friday its producer price index for final demand increased 0.5 percent last month, the largest gain since September 2012. That followed a 0.4 percent decline in April.
In the year to May, the PPI fell 1.1 percent, marking the fourth straight 12-month decrease. Prices dropped 1.3 percent in the 12 months through April, the biggest fall since 2010.
Economists had forecast the PPI rising 0.4 percent last month and falling 1.1 percent from a year ago.
A sharp decline in crude oil prices since last year and a strong dollar have weighed on producer prices. While rising oil prices are easing some of the downward pressure on inflation, the upward trend in producer prices will be gradual because of the dollar’s strength.
The greenback has gained about 13.2 percent against the currencies of the United States’ main trading partners since June 2014.
The stabilization in producer prices should support views that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this year.
Last month, gasoline prices surged 17 percent, the largest increase since August 2009. Food prices rose 0.8 percent in May, the biggest gain in just over a year, snapping five straight months of declines.
Higher food prices were driven by a shortage of eggs after an outbreak of bird flu led to the culling of millions of chickens. Wholesale egg prices soared a record 56.4 percent last month.
Murders are way up so far this year in Manhattan, The Post has learned.
Sixteen people were killed around the borough between the first of the year and Sunday. Over the same period last year, the figure was 11. That’s an increase of about 45 percent.
Shootings in the borough have also soared.
There have been 50 “shooting incidents’’ since Jan. 1, compared with 31 in the same time period in 2014 — an increase of about 38 percent. Some of these “incidents’’ involved more than one victim.
The number of shooting victims nearly doubled, from 33 to 61.
“City Hall better wake up soon,” a police source said. “When murders and shootings go up in Manhattan, everyone is affected,’’ he said, pointing out that crime impacts business, tourism and the city’s economy as a whole.
He said there are a variety of reasons, from the plummeting number of “stop-and-frisks’’ to the fact that the city needs more officers. “The cops’ hands are tied,’’ he said.
