Year: 2013

According to insurance executives, the White House is threatening them with “retribution” if they don’t keep silent about the problems Obamacare is causing them.

8:32 am

Fascist thugs: According to insurance executives, the White House is threatening them with “retribution” if they don’t keep silent about the problems Obamacare is causing them.

“What is going on is a behind-the-scenes attempt by the White House to at least keep insurers from publicly criticizing what is happening on this Affordable Care Act rollout,” reports Andrew Griffin of CNN. ”Basically, if you speak out, if you are quoted, you’re going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet.”

According to Griffin’s sources, Bob Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates – a prominent consultant for insurance companies with a history of criticizing ObamaCare – says he’s getting calls from the executives he works with, asking him to speak out on their behalf, “because they feel defenseless against the White House PR team.”

Laszewski told Griffin, “The White House is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet.” Industry sources confirmed “they fear White House retribution.”

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The president and the Democrats lied us into a bad law.

9:19 pm

“The president and the Democrats lied us into a bad law.”

The Right opposed the law on principle. A single party — the Democrats — own this law in a way that no party has had complete ownership of any major social legislation in a century. They bought this legislation with deceit and the GOP said so. Now that it is going into effect, the facts on the ground are confirming that deceit. Moreover, the same haughty condescending bureaucrats and politicians who told us they were smart enough and tech-savvy enough to do just about anything are being exposed as incompetent political hacks.

And remember: This same President and those same Democrats re-affirmed their support of Obamacare less than one month ago by insisting on shutting the government down rather than agree to even the slightest revision of this disaster of a law.

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The reasons Obamacare makes health insurance much more expensive.

8:55 pm

The reasons Obamacare makes health insurance much more expensive.

All of these reasons were expounded in great detail by conservatives back in 2010 in their effort to get Democrats to negotiate the law. The reasoned response from the left: “You’re a racist!”

Well it now turns out that a lot of very liberal pundits, politicians, and Democratic supporters are racist too, as they are discovering that the conservatives in 2010 were right.

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Sierra Nevada reveals that its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle survived its bad landing in weekend in reasonably good shape.

5:06 pm

Sierra Nevada reveals that its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle survived its bad landing this weekend in reasonably good shape.

After lining up on the runway, the spacecraft’s nose landing skid and right main landing gear deployed normally about 200 feet off the ground. But the left main gear hung up for some reason. Sirangelo said the software issued the proper commands, leading engineers to suspect a mechanical problem of some sort.

The landing gear in the test vehicle were taken from an F-5 training jet and will not be used on operational versions of the Dream Chaser.

In any case, the Dream Chaser’s flight software responded to the unbalanced load at touchdown, keeping the spacecraft’s left wing off the ground as long as possible. But it eventually came down and the craft skidded off the runway in a cloud of dust. [emphasis mine]

They should release the video. If the vehicle’s software was able to keep the vehicle stable, even as it was speeding down a runway short one wheel, this would impress people. Not releasing video of this only feeds the doubts people have.

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Steny Hoyer, #2 Democrat in the House, admitted today that Democrats knew that Obamacare would cause the cancellation of millions of health plans.

9:48 am

Steny Hoyer, #2 Democrat in the House, admitted today that Democrats knew that Obamacare would cause the cancellation of millions of health plans.

The Democrats really think Americans are stupid. This is how Hoyer tried to explain away Obama’s often-repeated lie that “if you like your plan you get to keep it”:

Asked by another reporter how repeated statements by Obama to the contrary weren’t “misleading,” Hoyer said “I don’t think the message was wrong. I think the message was accurate. It was not precise enough…[it] should have been caveated with – ‘assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do.’”

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Geologists have determined that the magma reservoir under Yellowstone is much bigger than previously thought.

9:25 am

The uncertainty of science: Geologists have determined that the magma reservoir under Yellowstone is much bigger than previously thought.

Jamie Farrell, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah, mapped the underlying magma reservoir by analysing data from more than 4,500 earthquakes. Seismic waves travel more slowly through molten rock than through solid rock, and seismometers can detect those changes.

The images show that the reservoir resembles a 4,000-cubic-kilometre underground sponge, with 6–8% of it filled with molten rock. It underlies most of the Yellowstone caldera and extends a little beyond it to the northeast.

The geologists also noted that the threat from a huge volcanic eruption is less of a concern than that of earthquakes.

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Sierra Nevada today released a video of the test flight this past weekend of its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.

9:07 am

Sierra Nevada today released a video of the test flight this past weekend of its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.

Don’t get too excited. They very cleverly have edited the tape so that we do not see what happened after touchdown. You can see how the left landing gear does not completely deploy, but then they cut away. Nonetheless, the video is posted below the fold.
» Read more

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“It was reported today by MSNBC that President Obama was unaware that he had ever said to anyone the words ‘If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.'”

11:23 pm

“It was reported today by MSNBC that President Obama was unaware that he had ever said to anyone the words ‘If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.'”

As is commonly known, the details of policies put in place by various departments of the Administration are considered beneath the purview of the office of the presidency. The President is above all that and, as Chris Matthews points out, he can hardly be expected to remember such minutiae such as who gave the order to stand down at Benghazi, which is thousands of miles away, or who ordered the IRS to harass certain Tea Party members, let alone members of other terrorist groups, or even what was happening in Fast & Furious down in Mexico. That’s somebody else’s country, said Matthews, and the President just wasn’t personally aware. Besides, he was on the golf course at the time . . . every time.

There’s more, all tragically hilarious.

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