The Week Hell Froze Over

By Hank Silverberg

 Much of the country spent this past week in bone chilling cold. There were record low temperatures in lots of places as the Polar Vortex moved further south than usual. Things were actually frozen over in Hell (Michigan) where the thermometer dropped to minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit,  turning the small town’s  streets and brooks into sheer ice.  

(The Polar Vortex courtesy of NASA) 

But that is not the only thing that made the country shiver this week. Our President once again showed a total lack of knowledge on Climate Change, which has already begun to have an impact on weather systems in both the winter and summer. While we were shivering, Australians were experiencing their hottest summer with record temperatures as high as 120 degrees. There is science in all this.  Climate Change is making extreme weather patterns more likely.

https://www.edf.org/climate/climate-change-and-extreme-weather

But that has not stopped our President from making a fool of himself once again with his favorite format—Twitter. He even misspelled the word “warming." 

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!

208K

9:28 PM - Jan 28, 2019

  

He sent an additional chill down our side when he disagreed with every single leader of our nation’s intelligence community who had just testified on Capital Hill.  The Director of National Intelligence and the leaders of the CIA and FBI, among others, all testified that Russian interference in our electoral system and will remain a threat in 2020. They said the potential for North Korea to build a nuclear weapon remains strong despite the President’s diplomatic efforts. And they told Congress that ISIS, though weakened, is still a factor in Syria and Iraq. The intelligence advisers also said the Obama Administration treaty with Iran on nuclear weapons is still being honored by Iran despite the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the agreement.  

Mr. Trump turned to Twitter again to say no, they are wrong, and he is right. Here’s the one on Iran:

  

Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

....a source of potential danger and conflict. They are testing Rockets (last week) and more and are coming very close to the edge. There economy is now crashing, which is the only thing holding them back. Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!

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8:56 AM - Jan 30, 2019

We were just starting to warm up as the Polar Vortex moved back to the Arctic, when another chill came creeping up the James River in Virginia. It has slowly begun to defuse the Blue Wave that has been settling over the Old Dominion for the last couple of decades. 

Governor Ralph Northam, considered a moderate Democrat willing to work with both sides of the aisle, was hit with a 35-year-old mistake. Someone had found his page in a 1984 yearbook from the Eastern Virginia Medical School where he had trained to become an obstetrician. There was a picture of two people, one in black-face, the other in a white KKK robe complete with hood. At first he apologized, but then at a bizarre news conference on Saturday, he claimed he was not in that picture, though there was another one of him in black-face portraying Michael Jackson at a Halloween Party.

It also sent a lot of people to dusty bookshelves looking for their college yearbooks to make sure there was nothing incriminating in there. Who doesn’t know what was posted about them in their yearbook? Here's one of mine: 

(From my FDU yearbook, 1974
A friend has been cropped out
to protect her privacy)   

 Virginia was transformed into a political circus. The Governor’s credibility evaporated as fast as the cold weather, and everyone of note in the Democratic Party was calling on Northam to resign.

Two things struck me about the entire mess. How did Northam serve five years in the State Senate, four years as Lt. Governor and a year as Governor before this came out? Who had this information on hold, waiting for just the right time to bring it out? 

It was revealed just two days after the governor went on WTOP radio to talk about a bill to repeal some restrictions on abortion in Virginia. His liberal interpretation of the proposed changes had the pro-life crowd screaming “infanticide” and “murder,” though the changes would allow neither. It re-opened a wound which had been festering for several years across the state.   

Many Democrats were quick to condemn Northam and call for his resignation over the yearbook pictures, including the entire Democratic power structure in Virginia. His political future is gone His action 35 years ago was despicable, and his handling of its disclosure inept.

The second angle though is the hypocrisy of the Republican Party, particularly in Virginia.  They were quick to condemn Northam for his mistake 35 years ago, even though they are the party which spent the last couple of years fighting to preserve Confederate monuments across the state and across the country. They were particularly critical of Northam after he changed his story at the news conference and claimed  the original photo was not him. He isn’t telling the truth, the Republicans and their pundits screamed across the extensive news coverage on multiple platforms.

(Stonewall Jackson statue in Capital Square in Richmond)

 My reaction echoed others. “You’re kidding, right?” This was coming from the party that nominated and continues to support the Liar-In-Chief. So, let’s have some perspective. Ralph Northam will be chased out of office for a decades-old picture that may or may not have been him and for dressing up in black-face at a party in 1984. In the current political climate that is expected.

But Donald Trump has lied eight thousand times since taking office according to The Washington Post , and has refused to condemn white supremacists after Charlottesville, and will not believe his own intelligence advisers on vital matters of national security. And he is still in office?

Finally, the irony of it all. Virginia’s Lt. Governor is a man named Justin Fairfax. When he ran for the job a year ago, he got very little help from the Democratic establishment. His last name comes from Lord Fairfax, the British Lord from the 18^th  Century, who OWNED Justin Fairfax’s great, great, great, great grandfather. Justin Fairfax, a black man, descended from a slave, is most likely headed to the Executive Mansion on Capital Square in Richmond, just a stone's throw from the statues of Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart and Jefferson Davis. He would be the second black man to serve as Virginia’s governor and would be the nation’s only black governor at present.        

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