Clear and really, really cold this early Thursday on California’s north coast, and yesterday we had some record low temperatures, but still not as chilly as other parts of the Western US.
For instance, Texas had one drastic weather swing: Wednesday’s official high in Dallas was 80. Thursday night brings freezing rain, sleet and a low in the 20s, according to the National Weather Service.
Snap, cold and shut my door.

And another hard snap — a couple of thieves who unknowingly stole some highly radioactive cobalt-60 on Tuesday are surely doomed: “The people who handled it will have severe problems with radiation,” he said. “They will, without a doubt, die.”
Steal with caution.

(Illustration; Pablo Picasso’s ‘Acrobat‘ found here).

In the spirit of the cold, President Obama is running through a patch of black ice right now. Yesterday, he talked about something that so far he has done nothing about, despite all the bullshit, at a speech at a left-leaning think tank — income equality.
Via USAToday:

“I believe this is the defining challenge of our time,” Obama said in a speech at an event hosted by the Center for American Progress, a pro-Obama think tank.
“It drives everything I do in this office.”

Well, then, the vehicle has been running now without a driver the last five years. Instead of flashing the toothy grin for Detroit, for health care, for whatever, Obama’s ‘defining challenge of our time’ has gone unchecked, unmoved for years. Total waste of precious breath.
Bullshit says Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:

Maybe it’s not reasonable to expect an awful lot more from a sitting US president, but I guess I’m not feeling all that reasonable these days.
Or am I just being crotchety because I’m fighting off a cold?
In any case, I sure wish there had been at least one genuinely big, newsworthy proposal here.
It might have no chance of going anywhere, but then again, neither does most of this other stuff.
At least something big might have started driving the conversation in a more interesting direction.

Obama nit-twit ways will cost him and the Democrats — the core base of his appeal is tired of him.
In 2008, the young embraced Obama like a long lost political daddy, or something like that, and now in the reality of life, he sucks.
From The Christian Science Monitor:

In the past six months, President Obama’s approval rating has dipped 11 points to 41 percent among 18- to 29-year-olds, the generation known as Millennials, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Along with older generations, Millennials are growing increasingly disenchanted with the way Washington is operating: Only 1 in 5 of more than 2,000 Millennials polled said they approve of the direction the country is headed, down from 1 in 4 young people surveyed in April.
But the most notable shifts in opinion focus on Mr. Obama.
In perhaps the survey’s most surprising finding, a near majority of Millennials — 47 percent — would support recalling the president if it were possible (it’s not).
Some 52 percent would recall all members of Congress.
“A critical factor in the election and reelection of Barack Obama, America’s 18- to 29-year-olds now rate the president’s job performance closer to that of Congress – and at the lowest level since he took office in 2009,” said Trey Grayson, director of the Harvard Institute of Politics, in a press release.
…
The overall disillusionment with Washington is perpetuated by a feeling among Millennials that the government is losing touch with them, the survey concludes.
While young Americans are not rejecting politics per se, they are fed up with the current system, said John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Institute of Politics, on the conference call.
Because there was so much support for Obama from young voters, there were higher expectations – perhaps, too high, Mr. Volpe said.
“Young Americans hold the president, Congress, and the federal government in less esteem almost by the day, and the levels of engagement they are having in politics are also on the decline,” he added.

Boy, more than 50 percent of those polled would ‘recall all members of Congress.’ The dysfunction of government has played into young voters, the exact people who put Obama and other Dems in office.
Disgrace and sadness.

My Obama let-down occurred in July 2008 when he did his now famous three-point basketball shot while visiting troops in Kuwait — you can see the video here. Too slick, and way-too cool for school.
“That’s all I should do,” he proclaimed after making the shot.

Really — and leave the driving to us.