Because of Obamacare, child-only health plans have been discontinued nationwide.

Repeal it: Because of Obamacare, insurance companies nationwide have stopped offering child-only health plans.

Jared Wolfe, executive director of the Texas Association of Health Plans, said it is not because insurers do not want to cover children. The federal health care overhaul [Obamacare], and in particular the pre-existing condition language, has been interpreted to mean that insurers must write a policy for any child who applies, Mr. Wolfe said. That effectively ensures that only sick children will apply for benefits, he said — an unworkable financial scenario for insurance companies.

This happened in New York state back in the 1990s. The state legislature decided to help everyone by mandating that no insurance company could deny insurance to anyone, no matter how sick they were. The result: there was no point buying insurance until you were sick, which meant there was no way the insurance companies could make any profit at all. Instantly the insurance field shrunk, with many companies (including my own) abandoning the state.

But then, who cares? We live in amazing times, when a President can simply order — on his personal authority and without any basis in law — that insurance companies must provide free contraceptives, without anyone having to pay for their manufacture. Who knew what things were possible before Obama was President?

The cracks that have been found on the wings of the new Airbus A380 jumbo jet have now been traced to a company in the United Kingdom.

The cracks that have been found on the wings of the new Airbus A380 jumbo jet have now been traced to work done by a company in the United Kingdom.

A senior industry expert told The Times: ‘The issue is around the type of aluminum being used and the fitting which, as a result of the assembly, creates the crack’, with a source close to the problem adding, ‘It is a design and process engineering failure’.

The March 9 launch of Europe’s cargo freighter to ISS has been delayed two weeks so that engineers can climb inside and tighted two straps holding two cargo containers in place.

The March 9 launch of Europe’s next cargo freighter to ISS has been delayed two weeks so that engineers can climb inside and tighten two straps holding two cargo containers in place.

I suspect the reasons behind this problem are quite embarrassing, which is probably why the press releases are so vague about why the straps were loose and how the Europeans discovered the problem.

After spending $130 billion on solar power subsidizes, Germany has found the effort to be a monumental waste of money.

After spending $130 billion on solar power subsidies, Germany has found the effort to be a monumental waste of money.

Despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3% of Germany’s total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world (exceeded only by Denmark, which aims to be the “world wind-energy champion”). Germans pay three times more than their American counterparts.

Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germany’s CO2 emissions by roughly eight million metric tons – or about 1% – for the next 20 years. When the effects are calculated in a standard climate model, the result is a reduction in average temperature of 0.00005oC (one twenty-thousandth of a degree Celsius, or one ten-thousandth of a degree Fahrenheit). To put it another way: by the end of the century, Germany’s $130 billion solar panel subsidies will have postponed temperature increases by 23 hours.

Using solar, Germany is paying about $1,000 per ton of CO2 reduced. The current CO2 price in Europe is $8. Germany could have cut 131 times as much CO2 for the same price. Instead, the Germans are wasting more than 99 cents of every euro that they plow into solar panels.

Rather than invest in the pie-in-the-sky pipe dreams of politicians, wouldn’t it be smarter to let the market figure out the most efficient form of energy? At first glance that efficiency might not appear “green-friendly”, but if it is more efficient I suspect it is almost certainly going to have the least overall effect on the environment.

A liberal describes the tolerant liberal world.

A liberal takes a closer look at Islam and discovers the intolerance of the West’s liberal community.

I took a second and more critical look inside Islamic scripture, comparing and contrasting the countless acts of Islamic terrorism, with specific commands to carry out these violent and barbaric attacks on innocent infidels as ordered in the Koran, the Hadith, and the Sunnah. And after much difficult soul searching I had realized I was making more than just a documentary. I was making a terrible mistake. So I went back to my backers and told them how I had changed the outline of the documentary, to include a critical examination of the violent dimension that informed so much of the Islamic world today, and throughout history, and how desperately this story needed to be told, and I consequently lost the backing to my film.

As a writer who had written over a hundred articles for The Daily Kos, a liberal blog which receives about a million visitors a day, I wrote 3 articles outlining what I had learned about Islam, it’s execution of homosexuals and how hundreds of millions of women around the world were living under Islamic gender apartheid. I called attention to this as a human rights issue, human rights being in theory a big concern among Liberal audiences. The warm reception that followed included being labeled a “bigot” a “right winger” and an “Islamophobe” in the hundreds of subsequent reader comments, demanding that my “hate speech” be banned. And after that the Islamophobia watchdog site, Loonwatch.com created a link for readers to write directly to the editors of DKOS, demanding my voice be silenced. And I was immediately banned from ever writing for The Daily Kos.

In the weeks that passed I received many “goodbye” texts and emails from friends letting me know that we were no longer friends. I saw my name get smeared in print – lies, misquotes, distortions, character assassination.

Read the whole thing.

Solar scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center have once again adjusted their prediction for the upcoming solar maximum.

Solar scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center have once again adjusted their prediction for the upcoming solar maximum.

The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 70 in May of 2013. We are currently over two and a half years into Cycle 24. Five out of the last six months with average daily sunspot numbers above 40 has raised the predicted maximum above the 64.2 for the Cycle 14 maximum in 1907. This predicted size still make this the smallest sunspot cycle in over 100 years.

This new prediction is slightly higher than their prediction of 63 from two weeks ago. As they note, even this new number leaves us with a very weak solar maximum.

For the fourth year in a row, President Obama has defied a law that demands he take action on Medicare.

The law is such an inconvenient thing: For the fourth year in a row, President Obama has defied a law that demands he take action on Medicare.

This paragraph sums up why Obama has been so negligent:

Why won’t Barack Obama put forth a Medicare proposal? Simple. If he does, Democrats lose the opportunity to demagogue the issue in the run-up to the 2012 election.

The only politicians to propose any reasonable plan to make Medicare solvent have been the Republicans, led by Paul Ryan. I don’t like all the details in Ryan’s plan, but at least he’s proposed something. All Obama and the Democrats have been doing is fiddling while Rome burns, while blaming others for the fire.

Senate Democrats reject religious exemption in Obamacare.

Telling us who they really are: The Democrats in the Senate today rejected any religious exemption to anyone who does not wish to pay for someone else’s contraceptives or abortion drugs.

Personally, I have no problem with anyone who wants to use contraceptives or abortion drugs. What I and all free-thinking individuals have a problem with is the idea of the government forcing someone to pay for this, against their religious beliefs.

I guarantee that if this Obamacare requirement does not fall, people will end up choosing jail to honor their personal conscience.

Twitter Hate: The Left’s Breitbart Memorial

Twitter Hate: The Left’s Breitbart memorial.

As this blogger notes,

Even in death, especially in death, the left makes Andrew Breitbart’s case for him. They never seemed to understand that while the right is his audience, the left itself is his most potent ally — they prove everything he says with each hateful remark, each “ur a fag why don’t you get AIDS and die” tweet.

The left makes all of his arguments for him. All Breitbart had to do was add two letters: “RT” [re-tweet].

The left had a chance to prove Andrew Breitbart wrong today. Instead, they proved him right. [emphasis in original]

Seven Republicans demand increased NASA supervision of the new commercial launch companies.

Seven Republicans demand increased NASA supervision of the new commercial launch companies.

This is what I call shooting yourself in the foot. One reason the tea party movement started is because Republicans during the Bush years had sometimes become as unreliable as Democrats when it came to some basic political issues. If we want private enterprise and the free market to rule, then the last thing a bunch of Republicans should be doing is demanding greater supervision by government agencies.

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