If you’re like me, then you probably don’t like to leave things to chance, which is part of the reason why you’re reading this website. You’d be shocked, or maybe not, at how many readers love our survivalist posts. So with that in mind, here are some quick notes from the recent blizzard that pummeled Rhode Island.

DO NOT do your storm prepping the day before the storm. For example, here in Newport, the day before the storm, cars were lined up at gas stations. It looked like the gas lines my parents had to deal with in the 1970s. Believe me, the hoarding mentality kicks in big time hours before the storm.

If your town loses power and your gas station does not have a generator then there will be no gas coming out of the pumps. I’m envisioning the huge 7-Eleven’s with 20 pumps and not a single generator. So if you need gasoline to run your generator, make sure your auxiliary tanks are full. Then stay off the roads.

If you’re on the roads remember there are two types of drivers you want to avoid in the snow: Those painfully S-L-O-W—driving as if they’re on their driver’s license test, and guys with plows—they tend to drive a little F-A-S-T. So don’t be in a rush if you’re stuck behind the test group, and try not to lose it in front of your kids when the plow guy blows by you.

And some quick notes: Make sure your Blackout Buddy is plugged in, your flashlights work, and last but not least your wine cellar is sufficiently stocked—your nerves are usually the first to go.

After the horrific attacks on Charlie Hebdo earlier this month, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls identified “radical Islam” as the enemy of France. In an almost surreal attempt not to mix Islamist terrorists with the wide community of Muslims around the world, however, President Obama and his administration went to great lengths to insist that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam.

Flemming Rose, now foreign editor of the Danish newpaper Jyllands-Posten, was its cultural editor in 2005 when it published a series of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. Deadly protests in several countries followed, along with making Mr. Rose a marked man. Mr. Rose says of the Obama approach of putting a fig leaf over a problem that is not going away: “There is something nearly Orwellian in this refusal to call things by their names. If we say that terrorists are not radical Islamists, we might as well say that truth is lie, that right is wrong, that black is white.”

Laure Mandeville, U.S. bureau chief for the French newspaper Le Figero, explains in the WSJ how this self-deceiving approach is not only affecting the debate about the limits of free speech, but also jeopardizing freedom of speech itself. Ms. Mandeville asks, “Where will we draw limits?”

Will we also give in when radical Islamists say they are offended to see European women wearing bikinis or going to swimming pools while men are present? The latter question is already being raised in some French cities.

The answer will define our future. Americans have some difficulty understanding the depth of the European challenge. Given the marginal size of the Muslim community in the U.S., Americans are not confronted by the same questions or urgency. In France, as in much of Europe, these daunting challenges are rapidly becoming existential, despite the fact that we have been promoting different models of integration, some as in Great Britain or the Netherlands much closer to those in the U.S. Only if we are sure of the values worth defending will we be able to convince our Muslim compatriots to fight for France, its liberal order and magnificent heritage.

Muslim democrat Naser Khader, a former member of the Danish Parliament and now at the Hudson Institute in Washington, says that by denying that this is about Islam, the West fails to grasp that Muslims will be crucial in the fight against Islamic terrorism. “President Obama does us a disservice, because doing so deprives the Muslim community of its responsibility to fight this radical monster.”

Much of today’s modern world enjoys France’s rich heritage of the lessons, wisdom and freedoms enumerated by Voltaire, Montaigne, Montesquieu and Tocqueville, all of which are worth remembering. Read more here from Ms. Mandeville who “calls a cat a cat”—the threat that is radical Islam.

Michael Scheuer, formerly chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, tells Americans, “Relentless intervention and open borders have, respectively, earned America war with an increasing portion of the Muslim world and allowed our Islamist enemies into the United States undetected.

Dr. Scheuer advises: (1) The United States should withdraw all of its personnel and moveable physical assets from what Obama called the Yemen success, and (2) Washington should build on a successful de-intervention in Yemen by beginning the same process in the Syria-Iraq theatre.

From Scheuer’s website www.non-intervention.com:

The overthrow of the Yemeni government sets the stage for a Sunni-vs-Shia conflagration on the Arab Peninsula. The late Yemeni regime is a zero loss to the United States. What President Obama once described as a vital regional ally – media pundits are now echoing this lie – was nothing more than a Arab strong man and his gang who ruled the Yemeni capital of Sana and almost nothing else, men who generously agreed to take hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military equipment, cash, training, and who knows what else. In return, the Yemeni regime allowed what it could not stop in any event: U.S. drone and Special Forces’ attacks that violated Yemeni sovereignty. Silence was the Yemeni regime’s main contribution as Obama’s vital regional ally, and now with that government gone, and none ready to take its place, the attacks can continue because there is no sovereign government to object to them.

What good such attacks would do is another matter. They have killed some important Yemen-based Islamist leaders and may have destroyed some arms caches, but the fact is that Al-Qaeda-on-the-Arab-Peninsula (AQAP) is stronger than ever before. The U.S. attacks in Yemen – as well as those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and elsewhere – amount to nothing more than make-Americans-feel-good tactical victories that, as always, leave the strategic advantage and momentum with the Islamists.

Today’s reality in Yemen again demonstrates the extraordinary fecklessness of the U.S. government, both U.S. political parties, U.S. and NATO generals, and their EU sidekicks. Expensive support from all of them brought no stability to Yemen; U.S. and NATO-country military training did not create a force that could defend the regime; and Special Forces’ and CIA pin-prick attacks and drone strikes did nothing to slow the enemies’ growth. In addition, two Islamist insurgent organizations – the Houthis and AQAP — have grown larger, stronger, and better armed since the United States and Europe started supporting and publicly praising the Yemeni regime, while simultaneously lying to Americans and Europeans about how our now-deceased key regional ally was beginning to pull its own weight and was a shining example of the success of U.S. and Western policy.

There is, however, one bright spot in this otherwise dismal story. The arrival of the Shia Houthi insurgents as a potent rival of the Sunni AQAP gives the United States another — even if unmerited — chance to step back and watch the marvelously positive impact a regional Shia-Sunni sectarian war would have on U.S. national security. Such a war would hurt the U.S. economy a bit because Obama, Cuomo, and their deeply anti-American party have blocked U.S. energy self-sufficiency, but otherwise there is nothing but upside for the United States.

NPR reports that the recent private Palm Spring Koch conclave featured presentations by presidential aspirants Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

NPR writes, “The political network led by industrialists Charles and David Koch plans to spend $889 million for the 2016 elections.”

Before the pledging session at the Palm Springs conference, donors watched three likely GOP presidential candidates in a debate. Moderator Jonathan Karl, of ABC News, asked the three about the influence of wealthy donors.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said the real political corruption involves government contracts: “I haven’t met one person since I’ve been here or as I travel around the country who’s come up to me saying, ‘Oh, I want a contract.’ They simply wanna be left alone.”

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said the real corruption was about special access, which wasn’t happening with these donors. “I don’t know a single person in this room who’s ever been to my office, and I haven’t seen everyone here today, but a single one who’s been to my office asking from government any special access.”

But it was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who gave a full-throated endorsement of his hosts.

“Let me very clear. I admire Charles and David Koch,” he said. “They are businessmen who have created hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

Cruz paused for the audience to clap. “And they have stood up for free market principles and endured vilification, with equanimity and grace.”

There’s no word yet on whether the donors were dazzled. But the Koch network is showing interest in jumping into the presidential primary fight, something it’s never done before.

Speaker Boehner has invited Bibi to come to America to make the case for new U.S. sanctions on Iran. And John McCain is on the warpath. As Pat Buchanan writes, Mr. McCain believes the Iranians are on the march.

Alarmists may see a new Persian Empire threatening all mankind. A closer look reveals a Shia (Iran and Iraq) minority in a Sunni-dominated world where Shia are despised heretics. And of all the terrorist organizations we have the most reason to fear and hate—al-Qaida, Islamic State, Ansar al-Sharia, Boko Haram none is Shia, all are Sunni (like Saudi Arabia, who the Germans are now rightfully refusing to sell any more arms to).

Pat concludes, “The U.S. intelligence community has twice said Iran has no nuclear bomb program. And the most recent finding, 2011, has never been reversed by the director of National Intelligence.”

Other than President Obama, who obsesses over fairness? Children—unrealistic children who are prone to shout out, “that’s not fair.” Mr. Obama would like “free” community college for everyone so that “everyone gets their fair share, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

But according to one estimate reported by BloombergBusiness, 53% of recent college grads are either unemployed or have relatively low-paying, low-skilled jobs. Furthermore, the number of graduates is growing faster than the number of high-paying jobs.

The WSJ’s Daniel Henninger writes, “In Mr. O’s world, tax revenue is sort of like Tinker Bell’s pixie dust. You just scoop up another handful and spread it wherever you want.” Make no mistake, Mr. Obama’s fairytale of “childcare, college, paid leave, health care, a home, and retirement” fairness canard is going to be front and center during the next presidential election. He might as well be writing Hillary Clinton’s campaign agenda. Read more here from Mr. Henninger who fears that “…no conceivable Republican presidential candidate will be able to outbid or out gripe Hillary Clinton.”

Anecdotal observations: Dick and I are taking a French immersion class at our local Florida Keys Community College. The instructor, who teaches French and Spanish, was lamenting the low enrollment numbers in general at the school. We are among five taking the course—just barely enough for her to teach.  An acquaintance of ours from El Salvador told us that he attended five semesters of English as a second language at FKCC but was unable to continue. He was the only enrollee.