In Rat-Infested New York, Only Chick-fil-A Gets Shut Down For Health Code Violations Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/blogs-capital-hill/010416-788052-in-rat-infested-new-york-only-chick-fil-a-gets-shut-down-for-health-code-violations.htm#ixzz3wKuzGKFw Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook

Investors  . . . "Last year, 77 out of 154, or about half, of New York's restaurants were rat-infested — and that's on the ritzy Upper East Side, where a meal can run into hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

"Residents take great pride in filming YouTubes of New York's restaurants through their windows at night, cameras on as the vermin scurry around.

"There are even interactive rat maps showing where Manhattan's vermin roam.

"So it's more than a little passing strange that the city targeted the city's only Chick-fil-A for health code violations just months after it opened its doors.

"Chick-fil-A was subject to all sorts of city-government opprobrium last year after its Christian owner noted his opposition to gay marriage. A boycott was called, and consumers refused to boycott it — including the consumers near gay West Hollywood, as IBD noted here .

"City officials from Boston to Chicago and definitely New York condemned Chick-fil-A as "hate chicken.' " . . .

Government-imposed minimum wages: A world that cultivates every person’s inner Veruca Salt

After seven years of Obama and the Democrats, this is how things look in this country

Bookworm Room  "A month ago, my Facebook feed (which reflects the fact that many of my friends are Progressives) was suddenly overrun by a series of posters, all pointing out that minimum wage work is insufficient to support the cost of a two bedroom apartment.  It’s unlikely that the new minimum wage laws that went into effect on January 1, 2016, in 14 states will change these charts:

"Also, in a charming irony, that problem is worse in most blue states compared to most red ones, as you’ll see if you compare the two charts below:"

. . . "The traditional American system, whereby a person or a family, unfettered by government diktats, and aided by hard work, talent, and often strong family ties, leaves poverty behind, is what a Leftist of my acquaintance disdainfully calls “incrementalism.” Incrementalism, I was given to understand, has to make way for the Veruca Salt doctrine mandating that everyone gets it all now."

White House refuses to explain delay in Iran sanctions

Washington Examiner

"A White House spokesman on Monday declined to say why the Obama administration changed course and decided to delay sanctioning Iran for its illegal ballistic missile tests, but also rejected the idea that the sanctions were delayed because of pressure from Tehran.

" 'Ultimately we will impose those financial penalties, we'll impose those sanctions, at a time and place of our choosing, when our experts believe that they will have maximum impact," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday. "And those decisions are not subject to negotiation by the Iranians — or anybody else for that matter."

"The administration was expected to levy new sanctions on companies and individuals involved in Tehran's ballistic-missile program on Wednesday but then on Thursday did an about-face." . . .

The Sum of All Fears

Cal Thomas

"President Obama and members of his administration assure us we have nothing to fear when it comes to terrorism. Whether you accept this, or not -- and opinion polls show a majority do not -- there is another fear that in large part is behind the phenomenon known as Donald Trump. It is the fear we are in danger of losing America.

"Speaking as a member of a group that will in this century become a minority in America -- that would be white people -- I don't fear minority status. I fear that those who will soon make up the majority will not embrace the values and traditions that have built and sustained America through wars, economic downturns and other challenges to our way of life.

"Yes, yes, I know about slavery and discrimination, but the principles laid down by the Founders, which allowed America's flaws to be addressed and corrected by their posterity, seem to be disappearing.

"Many Americans are angry that politicians of both parties seem to have placed their careers ahead of their responsibility to take care of the nation. As Ronald Reagan said, we are just one generation away from losing it all. That's because democracy and equal rights are not the norm in the world. They must be fought for and maintained if we wish to pass them on to our descendants." . . .

Remembering 2015

Thomas Sowell

"How shall we remember 2015? Or shall we try to forget it?

"It is always hard to know when a turning point has been reached, and usually it is long afterwards before we recognize it. However, if 2015 has been a turning point, it may well have marked a turn in a downward direction for America and for Western civilization.

"This was the year when we essentially let the world know that we were giving up any effort to try to stop Iran -- the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism -- from getting a nuclear bomb. Surely it does not take much imagination to foresee what lies at the end of that road.

"It will not matter if we have more nuclear bombs than they have, if they are willing to die and we are not. That can determine who surrenders. And ISIS and other terrorists have given us grisly demonstrations of what surrender would mean.

"Putting aside, for the moment, the fateful question whether 2015 is a turning point, what do we see when we look back instead of looking forward? What characterizes the year that is now ending?" . . .

Blowhards Beware: Megyn Kelly Will Slay You Now

Vanity Fair  “ 'If it’s fair to question Mrs. Clinton for failures leading up to [Benghazi],” she says, looking into the camera at her 2.7 million viewers, “why is it unfair to question Jeb about his brother’s failures leading up to September 11, 2001,” as Donald Trump had just done. She turns the question to Jeb, speaking via satellite video hookup. “Is it a double standard?”

“ 'Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” replies Bush.

"She points out that Jeb’s in fifth place in the polls, and she wants to know, “What would it take to make you get out [of the race]?” Bush, looking as if he were wearing a scratchy, too tight suit, replies that he’s going nowhere." . . .

Space: The visionaries take over

Charles Krauthammer

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 21.

. . . "[Elon] Musk predicts that the reusable rocket will reduce the cost of accessing space a hundredfold. This depends, of course, on whether the wear and tear and stresses of the launch make the refurbishing prohibitively expensive. Assuming it’s not, and assuming Musk is even 10 percent right, reusability revolutionizes the economics of spaceflight.

"Which both democratizes and commercializes it. Which means space travel has now slipped the surly bonds of government — presidents, Congress, NASA bureaucracies. Its future will now be driven far more by a competitive marketplace with its multiplicity of independent actors, including deeply motivated, financially savvy and visionary entrepreneurs." . . .

Blocks of Pluto's water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains in this high-resolution image from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

“First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people”

Legal Insurrection
"A phrase I read for the first time today, but which explains how the fates of Jews and Christians are intertwined."

"I’m surprised I had not heard the phrase in the title of this post before today.

"Though I’m certainly familiar with the concept, it’s one we’ve explored here many times when discussing (i) that the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the inability of Muslims to accept any non-Muslim entity in the Middle East, but particularly not a Jewish national entity; (b) the plight of Christians in the Middle East who are on the receiving end of what would happen to the Jews in Israel if Israel ever lost a war; and (c) the Islamist-Leftist anti-Israel coalition, in which useful Western leftists are oblivous (at best, giving them the benefit of the doubt) to the threat they would be under if forced to live under the rule of their coalition partners as they demand of Israeli Jews.

"I got to the phrase in a round-about way. First, I saw Martin Kramer’s Tweet linking to his Facebook post:

Exactly 40 years ago, Commentary published Bernard Lewis’s landmark article, “The Return of Islam.” Remember, in January 1976, the Shah was still firmly on his throne, the Muslim Brothers were nowhere to be seen, and there was no Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda. So how did Lewis discern the “return”? He saw that regimes, including secular ones, were beginning to invoke Islam. This, he surmised, must be a reaction to a more profound trend. Perhaps the most prescient article ever written about the Middle East." . . .

 "Then I read through (skimmed parts) of Lewis’ Commentary article, The Return of Islam (Jan. 1, 1976), which is quite long.

"The central thesis of the article is that the West completely misunderstands the nature of the conflict, seeking to put it in the types of “left” and “right” disputes that dominate Western politics:"

The article referred to is posted next to this one in the Tunnel Wall:  "The Return of Islam"; prescience from forty years ago

"The Return of Islam"; prescience from forty years ago

BERNARD LEWIS / JAN. 1, 1976

Chris de Burgh Crusader live in Glasgow

"From the beginning, Christians played a leading role among the exponents, ideologists, and leaders of secular nationalism. As members of non-Muslim communities in a Muslim state, they occupied a position of stable, privileged, but nevertheless unmistakable inferiority, and in an age of change even the rights which that status gave them were endangered. In a state in which the basis of identity was not religion and community but language and culture, they could claim the full membership and equality which was denied to them under the old dispensation. As Christians, they were more open to Western ideas, and identified themselves more readily in national terms. The superior education to which they had access enabled them to play a leading part in both intellectual and commercial life. Christians, especially Lebanese Christians, had a disproportionately important role in the foundation and development of the newspaper and magazine press in Egypt and in other Arab countries, and Christian names figure very prominently among the outstanding novelists, poets, and publicists in the earlier stages of modern Arabic literature. Even in the nationalist movements, many of the leaders and spokesmen were members of Christian minorities. This prominence in cultural and political life was paralleled by a rapid advance of the Christian minorities in material wealth."

A quick run-down of Donald Trump's positions

Ed Straker  "ConservativeReview.com, which is edited by conservative talk show host Mark Levin, has emerged as a great ranking service for politicians. Recently the site ranked the positions of Donald Trump based on his public comments. Since everyone knows that Trump has spent most of his adult life as a liberal but has since recanted nearly all of his former positions, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and exclude any quotations over one year old. Everything you read below has come from Trump's own plush lips in the past twelve months:" . . .  Read more.

"Except for immigration, foreign policy, and energy, all of Trump's contemporary positions are more identifiable with liberal positions, which is not surprising, considering he has spent most of his life as a liberal Democrat.  Now, if you're a conservative and immigration is your number-one issue, you can still justify a vote for Donald Trump.  But Ted Cruz is almost as good – promising to build a wall, oppose amnesty, and enforce the law –  and he's much better on just about every other issue."

Americans not who Obama wants us to be

O.C. Register

A banner depicting a manipulated image German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Barack Obama is carried at a demonstration Oct. 7 in Erfurt, Germany, initiated by the Alternative for Germany party against the uncontrolled immigration and asylum abuse.

"Have you noticed the incongruity lately? Barack Obama has taken to telling us that, “This is not who we are.”

"The presidential rebuke usually comes as a scolding for doing things that we do precisely because they are things that actually represent who we are. This appears to annoy the president to no end.

"Obama recently scolded opponents of his plan to flood the country with Syrian refugees because, he said, “That’s not who we are.”

"Of course, he’s wrong. That’s precisely who we are, as evidenced by the overwhelming public opposition to his intention to admit unvetted and largely unvettable foreigners into our nation from places on Earth where anti-American sentiment is rampant. Deadly rampant, which everyone but the president seems to intuitively grasp.

"The U.S. has long had policies that limit admission to the country by foreigners based on their nationality, ethnicity and yes, even their religious affiliation.

"One may disagree with one or more of those preferences, or applaud them as reasonable and necessary, but to deny they are not based on “who we are” is simply disingenuous." . . .

Kentucky State Democrat LEAVES The Party and Joins GOP…I Cannot “Support Obama’s Policies”

Courier-Journal:  Rep. Jim Gooch latest Democrat to switch to GOP
 In a move that further weakens the Democratic Party's tenuous control of the Kentucky House of Representatives, State Rep. Jim Gooch  has switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican.
. . . "Gooch said that in his final year as president Obama will belittle Kentuckians "for not understanding the 'true science' behind climate change. We will be told that 'climate change' is the biggest threat to our nation and our planet."

Proud Conservative  . . . "Rep. Jim Gooch sent a resignation email to House Speaker Greg Stumbo and House Minority Floor Leader Jeff Hoover stating this decision is “a personal one, free of any negotiation for personal benefit to me.”

"Gooch has openly stated that he “cannot support any of the Democrats running for President.”

"He went on to say, “At a recent political gathering Speaker Stumbo acknowledged that the Democrat party was the ‘Party of Barack Obama’. I deliberated that thought and I came to the conclusion that I could be a member of the party of Obama, but that I cannot be a member of the party that supports Barack Obama’s policies. The majority of Democrats do support his radical agenda.' ” . . .

CBS WYMT covers Googh here.