Another court rules against Obamacare subsidies

Another federal court has ruled against an IRS decision to allow Obamacare subsidies in states with federal Obamacare exchanges.

This means that anyone who gets Obamacare using the federal exchange because their state did not set up its own exchange will not be legible for subsidies.

The court was also bluntly critical of the liberal judges who had written dissents trying to defend the IRS ruling, noting that

The role of this Court is to apply the statute as it is written – even if we think some other approach might ‘accor[d] with good policy.’” [Quoting a number of other decisions:] (“This Court has no roving license, in even ordinary cases of statutory interpretation, to disregard clear language simply on the view that . . . Congress ‘must have intended’ something broader.”) (“The power of executing the laws necessarily includes both authority and responsibility to resolve some questions left open by Congress that arise during the law’s administration. But it does not include a power to revise clear statutory terms that turn out not to work in practice.”).

This badly written law, forced down our throats by Obama and the Democratic Party, is going to do significant harm to many people now, because they will not get subsidies for their health insurance and the law itself forces the price for that health insurance to skyrocket to prices they cannot afford.

All the more reason to vote for Democrats in November, not because they have any brains or have demonstrated even the slightest ability to write laws, but merely because they care! All that other stuff is irrelevant!

We don’t need no intelligence briefings

Does this make you feel safer? President Obama routinely misses 60% of his intelligence briefings.

A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014. The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second.

The GAI’s alarming findings come on the heels of Obama’s 60 Minutes comments on Sunday, wherein the president laid the blame for the Islamic State’s (ISIS) rapid rise squarely at the feet of his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. “I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” said Obama.

According to Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake, members of the Defense establishment were “flabbergasted” by Obama’s attempt to shift blame. “Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bullshitting,” a former senior Pentagon official “who worked closely on the threat posed by Sunni jihadists in Syria and Iraq” told the Daily Beast.

This data, coupled with numerous reports showing that the intelligence community was quite clear about the threat of ISIS for years, illustrates how uninformed our President has been about these matters. Worse, it once again proves how willing he is to blame someone else for his own failures.

New study devalues carbon dioxide again

The uncertainty of science: A new study now suggests that previous climate models significantly over-estimated the effect increased carbon dioxide has on the climate.

Lewis co-authored a report with science writer Marcel Crok earlier this year that found many climate models running hot and overestimating climate sensitivity by 40 to 50 percent. The paper also criticized the IPCC for trying to hide the climate’s weaker response to carbon dioxide in its 2013 report by not giving a central climate sensitivity estimate.

Judith Curry, one of the co-authors, was also very quick to note that this result is by far not the final word. “There remains considerable meta uncertainty in the determination of climate sensitivity, including how the problem is even framed.”

Of course, if you are a global warming activist and communist, none of these minor details matter. Revolution for the climate is a must!

New Jersey prosecutor drops prison threat against Pennsylvania gun-carrying mom

How nice of him! A New Jersey prosecutor has dropped the treat of imprisonment for a Pennsylvania mother who mistakenly brought her legally purchased gun into New Jersey.

Allen was arrested last October after she was pulled over on the Atlantic City Expressway for a minor traffic violation and volunteered to the state trooper that she had a gun in her purse. She erroneously believed that her Pennsylvania carry permit was good in New Jersey, and for that mistake McClain was prepared to put her behind bars for years, separating her from her two young sons. McClain’s predecessor and prosecutors in other counties took a more lenient approach, commonly approving PTI for defendants like her. But until now McClain had argued that New Jersey law did not allow such exceptions.

As a general rule, it is wise to avoid entrance to fascist states. This mother has discovered why in a very blunt manner.

Hamas cedes some Gaza control to Fatah

In what appears to be evidence that the recent Israeli Gaza effort did significant damage to Hamas, the terrorist organization has agreed to give the Palestinian Authority some control once again in the administration of Gaza.

Hamas and Fatah leaders said that the agreement reached on Thursday calls for the PA government, headed by Rami Hamdallah, to “immediately” assume its responsibilities in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian sources said that the agreement allows the PA to take control over the border crossings in the Gaza Strip, including the Rafah terminal. Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, announced that the Palestinian Authority government would soon manage all the border crossings in the Gaza Strip.

A second quote gives as some idea of the corrupt patronage of these two organizations:
» Read more

AG Eric Holder to resign

Good riddance: Attorney General Eric Holder will announce his resignation today.

Morrissey offers a lot of good analysis about why Holder might be doing this now, but I think this story might explain it best: Federal Court Denies DOJ Motion for Delay, Orders Release of Fast and Furious Documents List to Judicial Watch by October 22.

The Holder Justice Department is under legal attack from several fronts. Holder’s effort to block all investigations, from Fast and Furious to the IRS scandal, will be revealed quite soon in court, and when it does, he is going to be toast. Better he leave now then be forced to resign at a time not of his choice. As Morrissey notes,

Resigning now allows Obama to appoint a replacement soon, and Senate Democrats to schedule the hearings during the lame-duck session (and don’t forget Harry Reid’s rule change on filibusters for presidential appointments, too, which expires at the end of this session).

Taking a close look at the political leanings of a global warming rally

Want to get a feel for the politics of the environmental movement? Take a gander at this detailed report, with numerous pictures, of a global warming rally that took place in San Francisco this weekend.

It was the same in New York at the People’s Climate Rally. Anyone who thinks it is the Earth these people want to save is incredibly naive. It is power they crave, and the ability to use it for their own ends.

Forest Service clamps down on free speech

The Bill of Rights is such an inconvenient thing: The U.S. Forest Service has instituted rules requiring journalists to get a permit before they can take pictures or videos on federal land.

Under rules being finalized in November, a reporter who met a biologist, wildlife advocate or whistleblower alleging neglect in any of the nation’s 100 million acres of wilderness would first need special approval to shoot photos or videos even on an iPhone. Permits cost up to $1,500, says Forest Service spokesman Larry Chambers, and reporters who don’t get a permit could face fines up to $1,000.

First Amendment advocates say the rules ignore press freedoms and are so vague they’d allow the Forest Service to grant permits only to favored reporters shooting videos for positive stories.

The fascist nature of these new rules is revealed by this quote near the end of the article:

[T]he Forest Service is giving its supervisors discretion to decide whether a news outlet’s planned video or photo shoots would meet the Wilderness Act’s goals. “If you were engaged on reporting that was in support of wilderness characteristics, that would be permitted,” [said Liz Close, the Forest Service’s acting wilderness director].

But if you are reporting on something the Forest Service disagrees with they obviously believe they have the right to deny you a permit to film or videotape.

The IRS versus the Constitution

Working for fascists: The IRS did not just harass conservatives, it also targeted groups whose only focus was to teach the Constitution.

It is now well known that the IRS targeted tea party organizations. What is less well known, but perhaps even more scandalous, is that the IRS also targeted those who would educate their fellow citizens about the United States Constitution.

According to the inspector general’s report (pp. 30 & 38), this particular IRS targeting commenced on Jan. 25, 2012 — the beginning of the election year for President Obama’s second campaign. On that date: “the BOLO [‘be on the lookout’] criteria were again updated.” The revised criteria included “political action type organizations involved in … educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” [emphasis mine]

Note that the targeting was aimed at educational groups, not political groups, which were simply working to teach Americans about the founding documents of our country. That the Obama IRS could somehow consider this activity political or partisan and subject to increased investigation is quite disturbing. Since when is teaching about the Constitution a Democratic or Republican issue? Or has it become one, with the Democrats now hostile to the principles of freedom for which these documents were written to defend?

Obamacare enrollment plunges

Finding out what’s in it: At congressional hearings yesterday health insurance experts described how the numbers of people actually enrolled and paying for Obamacare is dropping.

“They’ve deteriorated quite a bit, this was anticipated to some degree, but I think it’s exceeded expectations in some cases,” said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. For instance, state officials in Florida say their enrollments are now 220,000 lower than the administration’s count in April, going from some 983,000 to just over 762,000, a drop of more than 20 percent. A state official said some may have been duplicate enrollments because of website problems on Healthcare.gov. The others, he said, just didn’t pay their premiums and lost their coverage, a problem insurance companies are also reporting.

Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said, “I’ve talked to a number of insurance companies around the industry and they’re indicating that they’re down as low as 70 percent of the original enrollments they had.”

We must remember that the original announced numbers were far lower than had been hoped for to begin with. Now we are finding that even those who did enroll decided at some point that the coverage imposed on them by the law wasn’t worth the money and stopped paying for it.

But the Democrats care. They want to help. So what they their efforts are at best ineffectual and at worst destructive. We’ve got to vote for them anyway!

The People’s Climate March leaves New York a mess

“Their love for the Earth is so real, they couldn’t even use a trash can.”

The images of the trash left scattered on the streets of New York is striking, especially when compared to the very clean remains after the 2010 Tea Party march in DC, and provide more evidence that the loud cries of “Save the Earth” by these demonstrators were quite shallow and insincere.

Nonetheless, this apparent hypocrisy to me is less significant than the actual agenda of these fascists as stated by them, before, during, and after the march. They want to imprison their opponents and than impose their will by force on everyone else. It is far more important to note this fact than the fact that these demonstrators are sloppy hypocrites.

“They want to start taking — now.”

The two stories linked below, describing what it was like at Sunday’s People’s Climate March in New York, confirm for me what I had surmised from earlier reports prior to the march, that the march was a leftwing get-together with its central goal to use the climate as an excuse to impose leftist and communist redistributionist policies on the free citizens of America.

My headline is a quote from the second article. The full quote:

Put it all together — all the justice demanders, the tax Wall Streeters, and the spirit of Occupy symbolized by the angry pacifist — and the People’s Climate March was one long, loud, loosely organized demand that vast sums of money be taken from the wealthy and given to the clients of the coalitions and alliances and networks and task forces that make up today’s environmental justice movement. They’ve had enough of debating climate models. They want to start taking — now.

Lord help us, in that we have already tragically allowed many of these people to wield significant amounts of power, and they are using that power to impose their agenda on us all.

Obamacare forces Alaskan doctors to close their practices.

Finding out what’s in it: “It is an unsustainable system.”

“Within the last month, Fairbanks has lost three other much respected physicians for the same or similar reasons,” Dr. Wennen wrote. ”I am not the first and certainly will not be the last of the exodus of physicians from active practice because of all of this.” Dr. Wennen is far from alone in his stark opposition to the health-care law. A recent survey from the Physicians Foundation found that 46 percent of doctors in the U.S. would give Obamacare a “D” or an “F,” the Washington Examiner reported.

But the Democrats care. They want to help. They aren’t mean like those Republicans and tea party conservatives, who simply predicted that these kinds of disasters would happen if Obamacare was passed.

The disasters are happening, and the people to blame for it are the Democrats in Congress and in the White House that pushed this monstrous law through without any negotiation or discussion. Think about that when you vote in November.

Obamacare to cut tax refunds in April

Finding out what’s in it: After comparing the annual income and the amount of health credits received, the IRS is expected to take the tax refunds from a significant number of Americans who it determines received an overpayment of credits.

Your solution? You have to be able to predict with complete accuracy exactly how much you will earn. This of course is impossible for people like me, who is a freelancer, or for owners of businesses that depend upon sales to determine their income. Such people haven’t the slightest idea what their income will be from year to year.

Also, if you read the article above I dare you to then tell me Obamacare hasn’t made everyone’s lives more complicated. Just trying to figure out what this whole issue is about glazes the mind. Trying to figure out how to avoid a mine buried in Obamacare itself is practically impossible.

But remember, the Democrats and Obama care. That’s all that matters, even if that caring bankrupts us all.

Global warming advocates finally admit their focus is politics, not science

In writing a propaganda piece selling a global warming protest planned for Sunday in New York, this so-called journalist noted that if the crowd exceeds 100,000 “then the ‘People’s Climate March’ will likely mark the moment when global warming transitions from being a science and policy issue into a full-fledged social movement.

The writer goes on to rave about the diversity of the expected protesters, even while noting the following:

The People’s Climate March is backed by an unprecedented coalition of 45 major labor groups, including heavy hitters such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — a group that Henn said “doesn’t mess around” — along with prominent grassroots environmental organizations like 350.org as well as religious organizations.

In other words, it is a union/leftist coalition and isn’t diverse at all.

Regardless, after reading that first quote highlighted above, words fail me. This is an outright admission that this movement has no interest in the data and in fact doesn’t want anyone else to have interest in the data either. They want to impose a political agenda on society, and are using a made-up scientific crisis to do it. Worse, a whole generation of climate scientists have abandoned the pursuit of science in order to help them.

Ohio teachers threaten strike because they are being switched to Obamacare

Finding out what’s in it: Teachers in Reynoldsburg, Ohio have announced that they will go on strike rather than accept a school contract offer that takes them off employer health insurance and forces them onto Obamacare.

The school board says it wants to give cash payments to teachers to buy their own health insurance on the “new state insurance market.” Ohio did not set up a state exchange which means teachers would need to purchase their insurance through the federal exchange under this plan.

That federal exchange is Obamacare.

The comments at the link are entertaining, as they all recognize the irony of this story: These teachers and this union almost certainly supported Obamacare and Obama. They did it brainlessly, for partisan reasons, without considering for one second the real life consequences of the law their Democratic lords were writing and passing, consequences that conservatives desperately tried to explain to them. Now they have to live with it, and they don’t like it.

The sad part of this, however, is that you can safely rely on them to still vote Democrat in the next election. If you are brainless once, what will make you have a brain later?

Tennessee cheerleaders defy a ban on pregame public prayers

Despite a ban on any pregame prayers at a Tennessee high school, forced on the school to avoid court suits, the school’s cheerleaders led the crowd in prayer anyway.

Prayer organized by school officials is inappropriate and unconstitutional. Prayer organized by students, however, is completely appropriate and constitutional. I would hope more students do this kind of defiant behavior, because the anti-religious organizations that threatened lawsuits are increasingly challenging the rights of the students, and that effort must be resisted.

The disaster and ensuing coverup of the Obamacare website

New reports reveal significant corruption in the Obama administration’s botched effort to create the Obamacare website.

The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning. Titled, “Behind the Curtain of the HealthCare.gov Rollout,” the report fingers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development of the site, and its parent Department of Health and Human Services.

“Officials at CMS and HHS refused to admit to the public that the website was not on track to launch without significant functionality problems and substantial security risks,” the report says. “There is also evidence that the Administration, to this day, is continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with the website from public view.” Emphasis mine]

The evidence includes emails that show Obamacare officials more interested in keeping their problems from leaking to the press than working to fix them. To me, that demonstrates both a coverup and incompetence.

But hey, this must all be the fault of George Bush! We have got to vote Democratic so that they can do more of this for us!

Obamacare could leave 2 million families without insurance

Finding out what’s in it: Because of the way Obamacare is written, two million family members might not be able to get health insurance at affordable rates and will lose the insurance they presently have.

Essentially, the problem is this: Obamacare allows employers to offer insurance to their employees but not their families. However, because the employee has what Obamacare considers “affordable” health insurance in this situation, the employee cannot get any subsidies to pay for the cost of insurance for his or her spouse or children. Thus, the kids and spouse are left in the lurch.

But that’s okay. The Democrats and Obama care about you, even if the policies they force down our throats bankrupt us and ruin our lives. What matters is they care. And that of course means we must all blindly vote for them again and again and again until society falls apart (as it did in cities like Detroit).

Judicial Watch demands right to cross-examine IRS officials

Citing the apparent IRS cover-up, Judicial Watch has asked a federal court for the right to cross-examine IRS individuals under oath.

Judicial Watch is also seeking information about missing documents from as many as eight additional IRS officials involved in targeting Tea Party and conservative groups. Judicial Watch argues that the IRS’s unwillingness to provide this and other crucial information: “information that the IRS was ordered to disclose to this Court, under oath, more than two months ago – demonstrates that the only way the information is ever likely to be provided is if discovery is allowed and Judicial Watch is permitted to cross-examine agency witnesses…”

More computer crashes and lost emails at the IRS.

Cover-up: In testimony at House hearings on Wednesday, IRS chief John Koskinen admitted that computer crashes continue at the IRS.

“Hard drive crashes continue as we speak,” Koskinen admitted at a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing when asked if any computers had recently crashed under his watch. Koskinen admitted that destroying records would be an act “not consistent with the law,” but maintained that there’s no evidence that the IRS intentionally destroyed records. [emphasis mine]

The simple fact that the IRS proceeded with the destruction of Lois Lerner’s hard drive and Blackberry, even as the investigation was on-going, is direct evidence that the IRS did intentionally destroy records. They, and Koskinen, are breaking the law, and spitting in the face of Congress and the American people as they do it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson under attack for fabricating quotes

A series of recent articles have attacked Neil deGrasse Tyson for fabricating quotes and other facts in this lectures and presentations. This article provides a good summary.

The article also notes how Tyson’s behavior is quite typical for too many modern scientists, especially those who have been touting human-caused global warming these past two decades.

In related news, climate scientist Judith Curry gave a talk at the National Press Club this week in which she outlined very cogently the real scientific debate and how politics is distorting that process. Unlike Tyson, Curry does not mince words about the data, and considers the fabrication of information to be a terrible thing for scientists to do.

And then there’s this: The Lonesomest Mann in Town.

Philadelphia’s District Attorney likes to steal homes

Theft by government: Having broken no law, a Philadelphia husband and wife were evicted from their home and the house taken from them by the DA’s office, which stood to personally profit from the confiscation.

The nightmare began when police showed up at the house and arrested their 22-year-old son, Yianni, on drug charges — $40 worth of heroin. Authorities say he was selling drugs out of the home. The Sourvelises say they had no knowledge of any involvement their son might have had with drugs.

A month-and-a-half later police came back — this time to seize their house, forcing the Sourvelises and their children out on the street that day. Authorities came with the electric company in tow to turn off the power and even began locking the doors with screws, the Sourvelises say. Authorities won’t comment on the exact circumstances because of pending litigation regarding the case.

Police and prosecutors came armed with a lawsuit against the house itself. It was being forfeited and transferred to the custody of the Philadelphia District Attorney. Authorities said the house was tied to illegal drugs and therefore subject to civil forfeiture. In two years, nearly 500 families in Philadelphia had their homes or cars taken away by city officials, according to records from Pennsylvania’s attorney general.

This quote from later in the article is also key: “The very authorities taking the property appear to be profiting from it, according to Pennsylvania state records.”

Refusing TSA sex abuse

Does this make you feel safer? The TSA last weekend tried to body search an individual after he had completed his flight. The man refused, and walked away.

Last Saturday, Kahler Nygard took a Spirit Airlines flight to Denver to visit with friends. When he departed from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Transportation Security Administration agents patted him down and allowed him to board his flight. When the plane landed, he was singled out and ordered to exit before the other passengers. After he exited the aircraft, TSA agents approached Nygard and demanded that he go through an additional pat-down and a screening of his luggage for explosive materials.

He had already arrived safely at his destination in Denver and simply wanted to leave the airport. After an argument, which can be seen in the above video [embedded below the fold], Nygard refused the pat-down, despite the fact that TSA agents claimed that he would be arrested if he did not comply, and exited the airport without incident. Nygard flew back to Minnesota yesterday without any complications.

Watch the video below the fold to see him successfully refuse to comply with these fascist thugs and leave the airport. They had no justification for detaining him, he had broken no laws, and so they could not force him to comply. He asks politely “Am I being detained? Is that an order or a request?” When it is clear that it is only a request he says he is leaving and walks away.

Had they tried to detain him at that point he would have easily won a court suit for false arrest and police abuse.

Note that this incident illustrates two things. First, TSA security is a joke. This man was on their so-called “no-fly” list (for no justifiable reason) but they still failed to screen him properly before his flight. Second, their attempt to screen him after his flight shows us that airport safety has nothing to do with the TSA’s reason for existing. The TSA serves as a tool of the government to destroy our freedoms and to establish the power of government over our lives. We should stop submitting to this abuse, and demand that it end.

» Read more

Is your firearms training realistic?

Will the way you practice self-defense with your gun work in a real life situation?

Unfortunately, criminals rarely shout “threat!” as they attack, they don’t conveniently stand stock-still, and they’re incredibly uncooperative with their would-be victims. The sad fact of the matter is that even most “advanced” self-defense classes offered by reputable organizations and shooting schools only prepare us to deal with caricatures of threats, and generally in manners that won’t succeed in a real conflict.

Interesting article, and one that anyone who wants to carry a weapon, concealed or open, should read and think about.

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