Chutzpah.

Chutzpah.

It’s nice to see that despite being on vacation in Hawaii, the President can still carve out some time – between rounds of golf and snorkeling – to insult his political opponents. After all, nothing encourages bi-partisanship in the New Year like a little name calling and mudslinging. While enjoying his multi-million-dollar vacation (oh yeah… you and I paid for that) Mr. Obama decided to chastise Republicans for leaving DC without extending long-term unemployment.

The ability of Obama and the left to consider themselves completely blameless in all situations, with no responsibility ever when the things they do go wrong, is repeatedly astonishing.

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Even if you have health insurance, it might be cheaper to pretend to be uninsured and pay cash instead.

Even if you have health insurance, it might be cheaper to pretend to be uninsured and pay cash instead.

This article points out the one fact that might actually be a benefit of Obamacare: The law is so screwed up that it is forcing many people out of their health insurance, where they might discover that by negotiating directly with doctors and hospitals. And that negotiation, more than any thing else — including every regulatory scheme proposed by any politician from the left or the right — will really lower the cost for healthcare.

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After more than a decade of failed attempts, India has finally successfully launched its Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

The competition heats up: After more than a decade of failed attempts, India has finally successfully launched its Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

Moreover, this rocket was entirely built in India. It now gives that country a rocket competitive in the international communications satellite launch market.

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Boeing is moving its X-37B operations to the Kennedy Space Center.

Boeing is moving its X-37B operations to the Kennedy Space Center.

A spy plane used by the U.S. Air Force is about to get a new home: a garage at Kennedy Space Center that once housed NASA orbiters during the space shuttle era. The move was announced Friday by Boeing, the Chicago-based company that built the X-37B spy plane and is in charge of repairing the spacecraft whenever it returns to Earth. Previously, Boeing had refurbished the 29-foot-long spacecraft at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but the company decided to relocate its fix-up shop in Florida, where the vehicle now launches.

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Scientists so good they can predict things after it happens

Normally I would post this tidbit when I do my monthly update of the Sun’s solar cycle, due out in sometime in the next week. However, this piece of news is so ridiculous that I have got to post it now, just so everyone can see how far science in the modern world has declined.

For the past three years I have documented the number of times the solar scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center have changed their prediction for the number of sunspots during this solar maximum. They have revised their prediction so many times with such a large range that it appears that they really don’t have any real system or theory for making this prediction, but are merely guessing based on instinct, opinion, or tea leaves. Moreover, they do not archive their earlier predictions. If I wasn’t documenting them here monthly, there would be no way to know that while today they predict one thing (very close to what is the right number), two years ago their prediction was way off, In recent months, because the changes have become so absurd, I have been making screen captures of each change.

For the past two months they have been stating that the sunspot maximum had occurred during the summer of 2013 with an average daily sunspot number of 65. Below is my screen capture from when they made this change in November.
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“I have closed all my businesses in Ventura County, California.”

Sign of the times: “I have closed all my businesses in Ventura County, California.”

And the business owner is happy about it!

Never have I operated in a more difficult environment. Ventura County combines a difficult government environment with a difficult employee base with a difficult customer base.

Freedom not only requires that each person be free to follow their own dreams, it also demands that everyone else respect that desire and effort. If you read the story above, you will discover that in this part of California at least, no one respects this business owner’s desire and effort. Instead, from the government to his customers, everyone was out to destroy him, no matter what he tried to do.

So rather than follow his dream, he is shutting down and getting out. Very sad.

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Obamacare does not provide any easy way for a family to add a new baby to their insurance plan.

Finding out what’s not in it: Obamacare does not provide any easy way for a family to add a new baby to their insurance plan.

There’s another quirk in the Obama administration’s new health insurance system: It lacks a way for consumers to quickly and easily update their coverage for the birth of a baby and other common life changes. With regular private insurance, parents just notify the health plan. Insurers will still cover new babies, the administration says, but parents will also have to contact the government at some point later on. Right now the HealthCare.gov website can’t handle such updates.

It’s a reminder that the new coverage for many uninsured Americans comes with a third party in the mix: the feds. And the system’s wiring for some vital federal functions isn’t yet fully connected. [emphasis mine]

To paraphrase something George Will once said, the law is a blunt instrument, not designed to do many complex things. But with Obamacare the Democrats have asked it to do something incredibly complex, run the health insurance business. It can’t do it, and because of this it is now causing a great deal of heartache and misery for many people, a large number of whom are sick and vulnerable.

But we all know that the Democrats care about the sick and vulnerable, which is why they insisted that Obamacare be enforced now without delay.

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The second commercial launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been delayed three days until January 6 because an unspecified issue with the rocket’s fairing.

The second commercial launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been delayed three days until January 6 because an unspecified issue with the rocket’s fairing.

It appears the company wants to do some additional inspections of the rocket, just to be sure all is well. They haven’t been more specific then this,

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The 30 counties with the highest medium income just happen to be where most people work for the federal government.

I am shocked, shocked! The 30 counties with the highest medium income just happen to be where most people work for the federal government.

The only county among the Top 5 for median household income not located near Washington, D.C., was No. 3 Los Alamos County, N.M.—which is the smallest county in that state, and which is also home to the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. The median household income in Los Alamos County in 2012, according to the Census Bureau, was $112,115.

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