Year: 2013

More labor unions balk at the consequences of Obamacare.

9:22 am

Finding out what’s in it: More labor unions balk at the consequences of Obamacare.

Many UFCW members have what are known as multi-employer or Taft-Hartley plans. According to the administration’s analysis of the Affordable Care Act, the law does not provide tax subsidies for the roughly 20 million people covered by the plans. Union officials argue that interpretation could force their members to change their insurance and accept more expensive and perhaps worse coverage in the state-run exchanges.

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Climate scientists have been forced to revise their climate models due to the unexpected refusal of the climate to warm since the late 1990s.

9:12 am

The uncertainty of science: Climate scientists have been forced to revise their climate models due to the unexpected refusal of the climate to warm since the late 1990s.

In related news, the certainty of some ignorant politicians: A Democratic senator used the Oklahoma tornado to rant against Republicans who have expressed skepticism about human-caused global warming. Update: Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) followed up by blaming the tornado on global warming while pushing her carbon tax bill today.

The first story attempts very hard to keep the narrative alive that we are all going to die from global warming, even though the gist is that the warming has stopped and all the predictions of global warming scientists have been wrong. The second story illustrates the typically close-minded attitude of liberal politicians. The senator not only refuses to recognize the new data showing that warming has stopped, he has accepted the global warming narrative completely, including the entirely false claim that extreme weather is rising because of global warming.

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A Russian Bion-M spacecraft, filled with mice, lizards and other animals, returned to Earth after 30 days in space with about half its mice and all its gerbils dead.

8:45 am

A Russian Bion-M spacecraft, filled with mice, lizards and other animals, returned to Earth after 30 days in space with about half its mice and all its gerbils dead.

The Bion-M experiment, launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on April 19, carried 45 mice, 15 geckos, 18 Mongolian gerbils, 20 snails and a number of different plants, seeds and microorganisms, according to a Russian state news site. About half of the mice died, but the lizards reportedly survived. The Mongolian gerbils all expired, apparently due to an equipment failure, said Vladimir Sychev of the Russian Academy of Sciences, according to AFP.

It is unclear at this moment whether it was the harsh environment of weightlessness or equipment failure that caused the mortalities.

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Why the IRS scandal is the ugliest in U.S. history.

8:26 pm

Why the IRS scandal is the ugliest in U.S. history.

Why? Because you, the People, became the targets of a comprehensive federal government effort to stifle dissent, one made using the government’s overwhelming and disproportionate policing and taxing powers.

All of the other scandals, going back to Andrew Johnson’s post-Civil War scandals, Warren G. Harding’s 1920s Teapot Dome scandal, Nixon’s Watergate, Reagan’s Iran-Contra, and Clinton’s Oval Office sexcapades have actually been narrowly focused acts of cronyism, garden-variety political chicanery, or personal failings. It’s been insider stuff.

The IRS scandal, by contrast, is a direct attack on the American people. … Once a government gets the bit between its teeth and starts targeting special interest groups, that is the end of freedom, not just for those first groups targeted, but for everyone. [emphasis in original]

Such a misuse of government power must be dealt with. If we don’t do it, it will happen again, more forcefully, more violently, more viciously, and more effectively. Freedom will die.

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The White House defends the woman who was in charge of the IRS office when it harassed conservatives organizations and now runs the IRS Obamacare office.

5:15 pm

The White House defends Sarah Hall Ingram, the person who had been in charge of the IRS office when it harassed conservatives organizations from 2009 to 2012 and now runs the IRS Obamacare office.

If President Obama was so outraged about this scandal, as he claims, you would think he’d tell his minions that it ain’t appropriate to defend this person. Instead, you’d think he’d be doing what he can to get her removed from a position of power.

Instead, Ingram received a promotion and the largest amount of bonuses of any IRS employee. Moreover, the bonuses from 2010 to 2012 were all greater than $25K per year and thus required Obama’s approval to be issued. And she is still in charge of the IRS Obamacare office.

Sounds to me that, to Obama, her harassment of conservatives at the IRS was a job well done.

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AP’s CEO calls the Obama administrations seizure of their phone records “unconstitutional” and says they are considering legal action.

2:59 pm

In other news: The CEO of the Associated Press today called the Obama administration’s seizure of their journalists’ phone records “unconstitutional,” noting that they are considering legal action.

What is most disturbing to me is that, despite the clear pattern of abuse of power by this administration — from using the IRS for political purposes to making illegal appointments to smuggling guns illegally to Mexico — too many of its supporters are still willing to make excuses for it.

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