Author: Robert Zimmerman

The Treasury Inspector General has found that the IRS cannot account for $67 million of Obamacare funds.

3:06 pm

We’ve only just begun: The Treasury Inspector General has found that the IRS cannot account for $67 million of Obamacare funds.

he “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” (HIRIF) was tucked into Obamacare in order to give the IRS money to enforce the tax provisions of the healthcare law. The fund, totaling some $1 billion of taxpayer money, was used to roll out enforcement mechanisms for the approximately 50 tax provisions of Obamacare. According to the report: “Specifically, the IRS did not account for or attempt to quantify approximately $67 million [from the slush fund] of indirect ACA costs incurred for Fiscal Years 2010 through 2012.”

The report also found other spending abuses, including using the money for travel that was unjustified.

But everything’s under control. The Democratic Party will make sure Obamacare is funded, no matter what!

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Based on the rates just announced by the Obama administration, health insurance premiums are going to skyrocket in 2014.

12:28 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Based on the rates just announced by the Obama administration, health insurance premiums are going to skyrocket in 2014.

The news is almost all bad, and I predict that these numbers are an underestimate of what will really happen.

But don’t worry. The Democratic Party has your back. They are going to make sure this law takes effect.

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The Obamacare wars are just beginning.

10:35 am

The Obamacare wars are just beginning.

This is war—turning sectors of the economy into partisan battlefields is a cost of their agenda that liberals, with their pure faith in “programs,” never factor in. But wars also have a way of leading to unexpected outcomes.

Read the whole thing. The author outlines how this terrible law, defended again today by the Democrats in the Senate, will have numerous unintended consequences that were unexpected and are generally bad.

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A new delay in the launch of a Russian weather satellite illustrates the need that small satellite owners have for their own rocket.

10:14 am

Opportunity knocks: A new delay in the launch of a Russian weather satellite illustrates the need that small satellite owners have for their own rocket.

The planned mid-December launch of a Russian Soyuz/Fregat rocket carrying a Russian weather satellite and a half-dozen small satellites for British, Norwegian and Canadian customers has been delayed again, to late February, following the latest series of issues with the main satellite payload, industry officials said. The delay, which is not the first for this launch, illustrates the immutable reality confronted by owners of small satellites manifested as secondary payloads: You launch at the convenience of the principal passenger, and not before.

If there was a small rocket available for these small satellites, not only would they flock to it, the number of small satellite customers would probably skyrocket, as the only thing preventing the funding of many nanosats is the lack of the launcher.

On another note, the technical delays for this Russian satellite and its rocket once again highlight the quality control problems within the Russian aerospace industry.

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China today successfully launched a new quick response rocket.

9:57 am

The competition heats up: China today successfully launched a brand new quick response rocket.

Very little is known about the Kuaizhou rocket, other than it was developed by CASIC. No photos or graphics exist in the public domain. It is also known the rocket – likely on its test flight – was carrying a satellite, called Kuaizhou-1. Built by the Harbin Institute of Technology, the new satellite will be used for emergency data monitoring and imaging, under the control of the national remote sensing center at the national Academy of Sciences. The new satellite is probably part of a “quick response satellite system” model that was already announced as in the works by the Chinese.

The rocket appears to be fueled entirely by solid rocket motors. Thus, they could build a bunch and have them in storage, ready to go at any time.

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How the tentacles of the green environmental movement dominate the IPCC.

6:42 pm

How the tentacles of the green environmental movement dominate the IPCC.

The U.N. has charged the IPCC with weighing the evidence on climate change in an objective manner. The problem is that numerous IPCC personnel have ties to environmental groups, many of which raise funds by hyping the alleged dangers of climate change. This relationship raises a legitimate question about their objectivity.

The examples are legion. Donald Wuebbles, one of the two leaders of the introductory first chapter of the Working Group 1 report (a draft of which may be released next Monday)—has been writing awareness-raising climate change reports for the activist Union of Concerned Scientists for a decade. Another chapter of the full IPCC report, “Open Oceans,” is led by Australian marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, who has written a string of reports with titles such as “Pacific in Peril” for Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Astrophysicist Michael Oppenheimer, in charge of another chapter of the IPCC report, “Emergent Risks and Key Vulnerabilities,” advises the Environmental Defense Fund (after having spent more than two decades on its payroll).

University of Maryland scientist Richard Moss is a former fulltime WWF vice president, while Jennifer Morgan used to be the WWF’s chief climate change spokesperson. Both are currently IPCC review editors—a position that’s supposed to ensure that feedback from IPCC external reviewers is addressed in an even-handed manner.

My own examination of the 2007 IPCC report found that two-thirds of its 44 chapters included at least one individual with ties to the WWF. Some were former or current employees, others were members of a WWF advisory panel whose purpose is to heighten the public’s sense of urgency around climate change.

Considering these facts, if the IPCC report even mentions the 15 year pause in warming it will be a remarkable thing.

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China announced today that it plans to hold the launch cost of its Long March rockets at $70 million per launch.

4:56 pm

The competition heats up: China announced today that it plans to hold the launch cost of its Long March rockets at $70 million per launch.

Until Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., arrived on the scene with advertised launch prices that bested even those of the Chinese, the Long March was considered the low-cost option among providers of rockets carrying satellites to geostationary transfer orbit, where most communications satellites are dropped off in orbit. [Chinese] officials point out that SpaceX has yet to prove its ability to maintain its prices – between $58 million and around $65 million for commercial customers – as it inaugurates its new Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket and ramps production to meet the company’s large commercial backlog.

China is gambling that its proven track record will entice customers to pay them the extra money over SpaceX’s unproven Falcon 9.

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The Antarctica icecap is now grown to be the largest it has been in 35 years.

2:51 pm

The uncertainty of science: The Antarctica icecap is now grown to be the largest it has been in 35 years.

Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a warming world. On Saturday, the ice extent reached 19.51 million square kilometers, according to data posted on the National Snow and Ice Data Center Web site. That number bested record high levels set earlier this month and in 2012 (of 19.48 million square kilometers). Records date back to October 1978.

Uh, maybe the world isn’t warming as predicted?

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One man’s Obamacare nightmare.

2:24 pm

We’ve only just begun: One man’s Obamacare nightmare.

Insurance for the Mangiones and their two boys,which they bought on the individual market, was going to almost triple in 2014 — from $333 a month to $965. The insurance carrier made it clear the increase was in order to be compliant with the new health care law.

“This isn’t a Cadillac plan, this isn’t even a silver plan,” Mangione said, referring to higher levels of coverage under ObamaCare. “This is a high deductible plan where I’m assuming a lot of risk for my health insurance for my family. And nothing has changed, our boys are healthy– they’re young –my wife is healthy. I’m healthy, nothing in our medical history has changed to warrant a tripling of our premiums.

Sorry guy, something has changed to warrant the tripling of your premium: Obamacare is going into effect.

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German politicians openly admit they are trying to squelch any mention in the IPCC report of the recent 15 year pause in global temperature rise.

10:03 am

German politicians openly admit they are trying to squelch any mention in the IPCC report of the recent 15 year pause in global temperature rise.

Despite resistance from many researchers, the German ministries insist that it is important not to detract from the effectiveness of climate change warnings by discussing the past 15 years’ lack of global warming. Doing so, they say, would result in a loss of the support necessary for pursuing rigorous climate policies. “Climate policy needs the element of fear,” [German Green Party politician Hermann] Ott openly admits. “Otherwise, no politician would take on this topic.”

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research would prefer to leave any discussion of the global warming hiatus entirely out of the new IPCC report summary. “In climate research, changes don’t count until they’ve been observed on a timescale of 30 years,” claims one delegate participating in the negotiations on behalf of German Research Minister Johanna Wanka of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The Ministry for the Environment’s identical stance: “Climate fluctuations that don’t last very long are not scientifically relevant.” [emphasis mine]

I must admire the Green Party politician for admitting that his approach to science and politics is the use of fear. He might be the most honest, if fascist, politician in the world!

The IPCC and the climate science community should be warned, however. Their reputation for honest science is already in the tank. If the IPCC report to be released later this week makes believe that the climate pause hasn’t happened their ability to persuade anyone will be gone forever.

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Obamacare was written and passed solely by Democrats.

9:53 am

A reminder: Obamacare was written and passed solely by the Democrats.

The no-trespass sign to the GOP during the writing of the Affordable Care Act deprived it of the benefits of critical scrutiny and helpful ideas from the business community that is a primary GOP constituent. That kind of input might have prevented many of the calamities caused by ObamaCare: the uncertainty prompting employers to put off hiring; the high costs provoking big businesses like Delta and Walgreens to shed coverage, and others to shift parts of their workforce from full to part time; the threat to union-negotiated medical insurance, and the unpopularity of the law.

While Social Security and Medicare always had hard-core foes on the right, that was nothing like the broad, persistent and combative enmity directed at ObamaCare. Democrats have no one to blame but their our-way-or-the-highway approach. [emphasis mine]

This law is the fault of the Democrats, and no one should allow them to distract us into forgetting that. Moreover, when or if the government shuts down, it will be because the Democrats in power once again voted in support of this terrible law. And they did it now, when its destructive consequences have become all too evident.

As much as they like to blame others for their failures, this failure is their responsibility, through and through.

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A seventh grade student faces expulsion from his school because he was playing with an air pistol — in his own yard.

9:18 am

Madness: A seventh grade student faces expulsion from his school because he was playing with an air pistol — in his own yard.

Khalid Caraballo, 12, and his friend, Aidan, were suspended for “possession, handling and use of a firearm” because they “shot two other friends who were with them while playing” with the airsoft guns, WAVY-TV reported. Caraballo answered “no, sir,” when asked if he took the toy gun to the bus stop or to school. “We were in our yard. This had nothing to do with school,” the student said.

So, government schools now have the right to tell students what they can and cannot do, wherever they are?

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Senator Cruz’s speech today in trying to get the Senator to pass the House bill funding the government but defunding Obamacare.

7:06 pm

An evening pause: Senator Cruz’s (R-Texas) speech today in trying to get the Senate to pass the House continuing resolution funding the government but defunding Obamacare. His speech begins at 6:25, after Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) rejected that bill.

I think it worthwhile for everyone to watch this speech, as Cruz makes it very clear that the only people willing to shut the government down are the Democrats. Moreover, Reid’s rejection establishes unequivocally the fact that the Democrats are once again endorsing Obamacare, despite its now very obvious disastrous problems.

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The head of the IPCC, railroad engineer Rajendra Pachauri, plans to step down in 2015.

4:05 pm

The head of the IPCC, railroad engineer Rajendra Pachauri, plans to step down in 2015.

I don’t know why he is waiting that long. When the next report is released next week the IPCC is likely to be finished. It is very doubtful the UN will get the funds to do another, especially as it appears that a lot of scientists are very disenchanted with how this political process has been warping the science.

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A group of Serbian academics, disgusted with the poor state of their country’s research output, have scammed a Romanian magazine by publishing a completely fabricated hoax article.

2:32 pm

A group of Serbian academics, disgusted with the poor state of their country’s research output, have scammed a Romanian science journal by getting it to accept their completely fabricated hoax article.

The paper is replete with transparent gimmicks — obvious, that is, had anyone at the publication been paying attention — including a reference to the scholarship of [singer Michael] Jackson, Weber, [porn star Ron] Jeremy and citations to new studies by Bernoulli and Laplace, both dead more than 180 years (Weber died in 1920). They also throw in references to the “Journal of Modern Illogical Studies,” which to the best of our knowledge does not and never has existed (although perhaps it should), and to a researcher named, dubiously, “A.S. Hole.” And, we hasten to add, the noted Kazakh polymath B. Sagdiyev, otherwise known as Borat.

Their paper is hilarious and completely ridiculous, and yet it was published in a so-called serious journal without question. The best part is that they list Alan Sokal’s hoax paper from 1996 as one of their sources.

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The global warming scientists at the IPCC struggle to explain the lack of warming.

9:41 am

The global warming scientists at the IPCC struggle to explain the lack of warming.

Though scientists don’t have any firm answers, they do have multiple theories. Xie has argued that the hiatus is the result of heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean — a little-understood, naturally occurring process that repeats itself every few decades. Xie and his colleagues presented the idea in a study published last month in the prestigious journal Nature.

The theory, which is gaining adherents, remains unproved by actual observation. Surface temperature records date to the late 1800s, but measurements of deep water temperature began only in the 1960s, so there just isn’t enough data to chart the long-term patterns, Xie said. [emphasis mine]

This theory, that the oceans are absorbing all the heat, is one of the new favorite explanations for the lack of warming by advocates of global warming. However, as this article correctly notes, we have no good data to support it, and even fewer theories to explain it.

The truth is really summed up by the article’s last paragraph:

“This unpredicted hiatus just reflects the fact that we don’t understand things as well as we thought,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder and vocal critic of the climate change establishment. “Now the IPCC finds itself in a position that a science group never wants to be in. It’s in spin management mode.”

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A medical school official urges denial of all medical care for all “Obamacare nonbelievers”.

9:12 am

Leftwing civility: A medical school official urges denial of all medical care for all “Obamacare nonbelievers”.

The article also describes the growing list of other recent and vicious rants by leftists, including the communications director of the Democratic Party in Sacramento, all wishing harm on those who disagree with them. As the author rightly notes, now that the incivility is aimed at conservatives, Obama’s “pious talk about civility in the wake of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords is down the memory hole.”

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Because of the scheduled arrival of a Soyuz manned capsule to ISS on Wednesday, NASA and Orbital Sciences have decided to delay Cygnus’s rendezvous and berthing until Saturday.

8:53 am

Because of the scheduled arrival of a Soyuz manned capsule to ISS on Wednesday, NASA and Orbital Sciences have decided to delay Cygnus’s rendezvous and berthing until Saturday.

As far as I can tell, the software glitch and the delay are relatively minor issues, being handled with due care and caution, and will not prevent the eventual docking. More important, they are not serious enough to require any major design changes to Cygnus, which means the freighter will be able to begin operational flights soon after this demo flight is completed.

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Linking mass extinctions to the Sun’s journey in the Milky Way

12:53 pm

The Sun's orbit in the Milky Way

In a paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint service, astronomers propose that as many as eleven past extinction events can be linked to the Sun’s passage through the spiral arms of the Milky Way. (You can download the paper here [pdf].)

A correlation was found between the times at which the Sun crosses the spiral arms and six known mass extinction events. Furthermore, we identify five additional historical mass extinction events that might be explained by the motion of the Sun around our Galaxy. These five additional significant drops in marine genera that we find include significant reductions in diversity at 415, 322, 300, 145 and 33 Myr ago. Our simulations indicate that the Sun has spent ~60% of its time passing through our Galaxy’s various spiral arms.

The figure on the right, from their paper, shows the Sun’s orbit in red over the last half billion years. The Sun’s present position is indicated by the yellow spot, and the eleven extinctions are indicated by the circles.

There are obviously a great deal of uncertainties in this conclusion. Most significantly, the shape and history of the Milky Way remains very much in doubt, especially since we reside within it and cannot really get a good look at it. Though in recent years astronomers have assembled a reasonable image of the galaxy’s shape — a barred spiral with two major arms and several minor ones — this picture includes many assumptions that could very easily be wrong.

Nonetheless, the paper’s conclusions are interesting.
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Only two weeks before Obamacare goes into effect, the law’s health exchanges can’t figure out what people will have to pay for coverage.

10:32 am

Not finding out what’s in it: Only two weeks before Obamacare goes into effect, the law’s health exchanges can’t figure out what people will have to pay for coverage.

It appears the software for determining premiums doesn’t work. But don’t worry, the Democrats voted to fund this turkey today!

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