Month: November 2014

President Barack Obama are
likely to have informal talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin as
tensions continue to rise over the war in Ukraine.

Both the leaders are scheduled to be at the Asia-Pacific (APEC)
summit in Beijing and the G20 summit in Brisbane next week.
Although an “official bilateral meeting between Obama and Putin
[is] not anticipated,” a senior U.S. official
tells Reuters, “there [is] a good chance they would find time
to talk informally at the APEC gathering.” The two will also likely
talk about Syria and the ISIS insurgency.

The State Department this week
blasted Russia for supporting “sham” elections that put
pro-Kremlin puppets in power in the war-torn eastern regions of
Ukraine. “Should Moscow continue to ignore the commitments that it
made [honoring Ukraine’s electoral law] and continues its
destabilizing and dangerous actions, the costs to Russia will
rise,” the department stated.

The U.S. and its European Union allies have been trying to
de-escalate Russian aggression through both targeted and broad
economic sanctions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel today
suggested more robust sanctions to punish Putin. Russia’s
economy is suffering,
due in large part to Putin’s own poor handling, and the
nation’s currency is at record lows.

The war, which has already taken the lives of about 4,000 people
and displaced countless others, shows signs of getting worse.
Russia continues to violate ceasefire and political agreements made
last month, called the Minsk Protocols. “Recently we are seeing
Russian troops moving closer to the border with Ukraine. … Russian
special forces [are] inside eastern parts of Ukraine,”
says Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO. The U.S. is
the largest supplier of troops and funding for NATO.

Russian-American relations look like they’ve hit their lowest
point since before the Soviet Union crumbled. Reason
recently highlighted the fact that American diplomats are being
harassed, White House computers have been hacked, and Russia is
flying provocative,
nuclear-capable flights over Europe. Also, a Moscow art gallery
just opened featuring a caricature of
Putin spanking Obama.

Before
yesterday’s election,
Ann Coulter warned liberty-loving citizens against voting
Libertarian because “nothing matters more to the country than
Republicans taking a majority in the Senate.” It’s this sort of
mindset that distracts us from defending something far more
important than either party: individual liberty.

Democrats want government control of the economy and more
regulation of speech, innovation, medicine, school, and all kinds
of things. But Republicans want to control our personal lives and
fight constant wars abroad. It’s time America obsessed less about
Republicans vs. Democrats, argues John Stossel, and more about
electing liberty, in all its forms.

Even before the Democratic
Party’s…drubbing
(that seems to be the favored term this time around) in yesterday’s
elections, the White House was already blaming its supposed allies
for the defeats that were (correctly) anticipated once voters
trooped to the polls.

“Ultimately, you know, it’s the quality of these candidates
that’s going to be the driver of their success in this election,”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest
said Monday in what just might be taken as a slap at political
hopefuls who were frantically distancing themselves from the aura
of electoral leprosy surrounding President Obama.

Oh no you don’t, legislative Democrats responded. It’s the
albatross tie in the Oval Office who sealed our doom.

“The president’s approval rating is barely 40 percent,”
said David Krone, chief of staff to (soon to be former) Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid. “What else more is there to say? . . .
He wasn’t going to play well in North Carolina or Iowa or New
Hampshire. I’m sorry. It doesn’t mean that the message was bad, but
sometimes the messenger isn’t good.”

After most of the votes were counted and the extent of the
Republican wave—or Democratic washout—was clear, Dems lined up to

swing a bit more at the presidential piñata. Sen. Joe Manchin
(D-W.Va.) openly blamed Obama’s energy policies, while other’s
essentially referred to him as a boat anchor on anybody with a “D”
next to their names.

There’s nothing unique about this round of fingerpointing.
Political parties should reasses themselves after they take a
drubbing/shellacking/whatever to consider whether they’re
advocating policies or behaving in ways that the electorate finds
especially stupid or offensive. Republicans have
done this in the past, including after their disappointing
performance in 2012. It’s a big part of the reason the party ran
far fewer
overt loons for office this year.

Now it’s the Democrats’ turn. With an
unpopular president carrying their party’s standard and
despised policies in
health,
climate, and energy to their name, they need to take a hard
look at the fundamentals.

And for those of us who have to live with what elected officials
hath wrought, it’s finally time to grab the popcorn and get some
entertainment out of the latest round of fingerpointing.

While the Republican reconquest of the Senate was
widely anticipated, things had seemed a little shakier for certain
Republican gubernatorial candidates in the run-up to the election.
The Senate candidates were expected to ride a wave of anti-Obama
sentiment to Washington, D.C., but back in the states, Republican
politicians who challenged the powerful labor coalition could have
been in trouble.

But Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder,
both Republicans, won re-election yesterday, proving that it’s
possible to kick the hornet’s nest and walk away unscathed.

Walker, known for pushing tough reforms on public sector unions,
has now survived both a recall attempt and a re-election campaign.
Snyder, who signed a right-to-work bill into law, guided Detroit
through municipal bankruptcy, and reined in public sector unions,
was marked for death by Big Labor in blue-ish Michigan. But he
prevailed as well—by a less-close-than-expected margin of four
points.

Big Republican wins in the states will probably produce some
results that are unfriendly to libertarian positions, particularly
on social issues. But as far as labor reforms go, Republican
gubernatorial victories were a massive validation of the effort to
combat bankruptcy-inducing government employment levels and curb
the runaway power of unions.

Read more from Reason on why the power and influence of teachers
unions seems to subsiding
here.

The city of Berkeley, California, took another step away from
its freewheeling past yesterday. Politico
reports:

Berkeley, Calif., a city known
for its progressive politics, made history Tuesday night by
approving the first real sin tax on soda in the United
States.

Voters approved Measure D, a penny-per-ounce tax, by a three-to-one
margin after a bitter campaign battle, with the beverage industry
spending more than $2.1 million to oppose the initiative. The
pro-tax campaign was bolstered by more than $650,000 from former
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Berkeley has now done what more than two dozen other cities and
states have tried and failed to do in recent years: Put in place a
punitive tax on sugar sweetened-beverage tax designed to reduce
consumption and raise revenue. The measure, which covers sports
drinks, sweet teas and beverage syrups used in coffee shops, would
raise the price of a 20-ounce Coca-Cola by about 10 percent. The
tax, which does not apply to diet sodas, kicks in Jan. 1,
2015.

The prohibitionist impulse fared more poorly across the bay,
where a similar measure failed in San Francisco.

Speaking of local referendums and the regulation of people’s
pleasures, I should also note some happy news from South Portland,
Maine, where voters
approved a ballot measure decriminalizing the possession of up
to an ounce of marijuana. That has understandably received less
attention that legalization’s
big victories yesterday in Alaska, Oregon, and D.C., but it’s
still worth noting. Celebrate with the burning weed or sugary
beverage of your choice.

Every month University of Alabama in Huntsville
climatologists John Christy and Roy Spencer report the latest
global temperature trends from satellite data. Below are the newest
data updated through October 2014.

Global Temperature Report: October 2014

Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.14 C per decade

October temperatures (preliminary)

Global composite temp.: +0.37 C (about 0.67 degrees Fahrenheit)
above 30-year average for October.

Northern Hemisphere: +0.34 C (about 0.61 degrees Fahrenheit)
above 30-year average for October.

Southern Hemisphere: +0.40 C (about 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit)
above 30-year average for October.

Tropics: +0.19 C (about 0.34 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year
average for October.

Notes on data released Nov. 4,
2014:

October 2014 tied as the warmest October in the 36-year global
satellite temperature record, according to Dr. John Christy, a
professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System
Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
With a global average temperature that was 0.37 C
(about 0.67 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than seasonal norms, October
2014 tied October 2012.

Warmest Octobers (1979-2014)
(Warmer
than seasonal norms)

1.   2014    +0.37 C
      2012    +0.37
C
3.   2005    +0.36 C
4.   2006    +0.32 C
5.   2003    +0.30 C
      2010    +0.30
C
6.   1998    +0.29 C
      2013    +0.29
C
8.   2009    +0.27 C
9.   2004    +0.25 C
10. 2007    +0.19 C

Go here
to see monthly lower troposphere temperature data since 1978.