The first five months of 2014 have been the coldest since the National Weather Service began keeping records in 1888.  If "climate change" alarmists got out more, they might have noticed. Between 1979 -- when weather satellites started measuring temperatures in the lower troposphere -- and 1998, they rose about 1.1  degrees Celsius (1.98 degrees Fahrenheit). Temperatures stopped rising since then, and have fallen since 2012. The "pause" in warming (212 months) is now longer than the warming trend was (211 months). The earth has warmed about 16 degrees F since the last ice age. The net increase since 1979 -- 0.19 degrees C (0.34 F) -- is well within the range of natural fluctuation. So why, as President Obama says so often, do 97 percent of scientists agree climate change is "real, man-made, and dangerous?" Because they don't agree. The Warmists led by Mr. Obama are running a Consensus Scam.  Here's how the scam works.

If you were a political leader who wanted to control the population, but wanted to do it without using brute force, how would you do it? The answer: control how individuals and businesses spend their money by controlling their bank and other financial accounts. The Obama administration has set up a program to do just that, called "Operation Choke Point." If the government can prevent you from spending your money on legal products and information services it does not like, it soon has control over much of your life. You might be thinking this could not happen in America, but it is. Increasingly, businesses and individuals engaged in legal activities are having their banking relationships severed because people within the Obama administration and some politicians do not like the particular activity. The Justice Dept.'s "Operation Choke Point" should be renamed Operation Choke Freedom, for that does seem to be its very purpose.

It's been a month since we learned up to 40 of more than 1,400 veterans on a secret waiting list at the VA hospital in Phoenix may have died while waiting up to a year for treatment. Since that CNN broadcast April 23, doctored records and preventable deaths have been reported at 25 other VA facilities. It wasn't until yesterday (5/21) that President Barack Hussein Obama spoke in public about the scandal. He'd learned of it from news reports, said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. That's also how the president learned the Obamacare web site was a mess; the IRS was targeting conservative groups; security at the Benghazi consulate was lax, aides said. Evidently no one who works for Mr. Obama ever tells him anything. "I will not stand for it," Mr. Obama said. "There must be consequences." But he took no steps either to alleviate the suffering of veterans, or to punish those who've neglected them. 

What is the Republican Party's vision for America? You may have a hard time answering other than "not President Obama and his policies." Most Republicans plan to run their fall campaigns focusing on the Obama scandals -- admittedly a target-rich area -- with scandals involving Obamacare, Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service and Veterans Affairs. All of this is not a vision of the future, though. It is hard to build a consensus -- but smart, strong-minded individuals in the past have been able to articulate a vision that attracted not only the public but other politicians. Ronald Reagan accomplished this, and he was fortunate to have a visionary economic evangelist by his side who helped shape much of the Reagan program and became its principal salesman. The GOP needs this man's vision and passion to end the Malaise of Obama.

Liberals don't like black conservatives, but maybe God does. "Ben Carson is warming to the idea of running for president," Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard wrote after interviewing the famous neurosurgeon. He'd prefer not to be a candidate himself, Dr. Carson says. But "if I felt called by God to officially enter the world of politics, I would certainly not hesitate to do so," he wrote in his book "One Nation," released today (5/20). America is lurching into crisis because "God, with the big ‘G' is being replaced by government with the little ‘g,'" former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla, warned in a stemwinder at the Floyd County Republican dinner in Rome, Georgia last Thursday (5/15). Liberals tend to snark when evangelicals talk this way. They shouldn't. If they earnestly seek His counsel, God will show them how they are to serve, Dr. Carson and Mr. West sincerely believe. Evangelicals have from time to time confused something they'd like to do with what God wants them to do. And if God wants Ben Carson, or Allen West, or both, to run for president, that doesn't mean He expects either to win. On the other hand, that may be precisely what God has in mind.

My first email early this morning (5/16) was to congratulate TTPer Karma Singh.  You've been reading his reports on India, the last one being India's Ronald Reagan (4/30/14). The results of history's largest election - well over 500 million ballots cast - were announced today, giving India's Ronald Reagan - Narendra Modi - a stunningly massive victory.  The corrupt Congress Party, which has monopolized power in India for most of the last 67 years, had its clock cleaned.  Modi has a mandate to govern India as strong as Nehru's Congress Party in the 1950s. Nehru was a Third World Socialist who ruined India's economy.  Modi is and will do the opposite. India has much to be proud of today and much to look forward to.  Now we in America must hope that we'll follow in India's footsteps and elect a pro-capitalist pro-freedom pro-patriotism government, starting this November... ...But we certainly won't be taking those steps by electing an immoral idiot like Jeb Bush as president.