The dislike of Obamacare has risen, among the uninsured.

11:41 am

Finding out what’s in it: The dislike of Obamacare has risen, among the uninsured.

Weren’t the uninsured the group of people Obamacare was designed to specifically help? If their rejection of the law has risen, it provides more evidence of the law’s failure.

Which is no surprise to anyone willing to listen to any analysis of the law by any conservatives these past four years.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

New Yorkers react to Obama’s State of the Union speech, before it happens.

10:34 am

No wonder they all vote Democrat: New Yorkers react to Obama’s State of the Union speech, before it happens.

The best question: “So, what did you think about Obama’s faking a heart attack at the end?” And the answer? Watch.

And yes, it is almost certain that every single one of the individuals in that video voted Democrat, as about 80 percent of Manhattan’s population voted for Obama in 2012.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

NOAA fudges the numbers to turn a January cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.

10:06 pm

More climate manipulation: NOAA fudges the numbers to turn a January cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.

Adjusting the numbers might be justified in certain situations, but NOAA never explains why, and the adjustments they impose always create the illusion of a warming trend, even if the raw numbers say otherwise. If the adjustments were honest, I would expect them to move the numbers up and down much more randomly. That these adjustments only go one way — in favor of global warming — either suggests they are unconsciously allowing their biases to influence their work, or they are intentionally allowing their biases to influence their work.

Either way, their work is meaningless and untrustworthy, and should be ignored as less than worthless.

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Better medicine through engineering

3:26 pm

For me, the last eight months have been very interesting when it comes to medical treatment. I have had my left hand rebuilt to eliminate chronic pain, I had my heart inspected to make sure it was working properly, and this week I had the retina in my right eye re-attached using some very clever engineering.

For once, this essay will not be about the politics of medicine and the disaster of Obamacare, which is still ongoing. Instead, I will outline how freedom and human creativity has now made possible a whole range of modern medical techniques that are either improving the quality of life for patients or literally saving their lives.
» Read more

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Illinois officials have ordered an eleven-year-old to close her cupcake business that was earning her $200 a month.

1:44 pm

We’re here to help you: Illinois officials have ordered an eleven-year-old to close her cupcake business that was earning her $200 a month.

“They called and said they were shutting us down,” said Chloe’s mother, Heather Stirling.

According to the Post-Dispatch, health officials informed the Stirlings that they would have to “buy a bakery or build her a kitchen separate from the one we have” for Chloe to continue selling cupcakes. “Obviously, we can’t do that,” Heather said. “We’ve already given her a little refrigerator to keep her things in, and her grandparents bought her a stand mixer. But a separate kitchen? Who can do that?” Chloe was charging $10 for a dozen cupcakes and $2 specialty cupcakes. “I’m saving for a bakery,” Chloe said in the piece that got her into trouble.

“The rules are the rules. It’s for the protection of the public health,” said health department spokeswoman Amy Yeager. “The guidelines apply to everyone. People will react how they choose to react. But it is our job.”

If this doesn’t illustrate why the rules are a bad idea in the first place, I don’t know what will. A free society allows for this kind of creative innovation, and also allows the possibility that maybe all cupcakes won’t be perfect.

Sadly, we don’t live in that free society any longer.

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Multiple U.S. science agencies have been accused of fudging data to fake the existence of global warming.

9:34 am

Someone else has noticed: Multiple U.S. science agencies have been accused of fudging data to fake the existence of global warming.

The “adjustment” schemes in the official U.S. dataset are so drastic, according to Goddard’s analysis, that they managed to “turn a 90 year cooling trend into a warming trend,” he said, suggesting that there may be a “software bug” at work. “Bottom line is that the [NOAA National Climatic Data Center] U.S. temperature record is completely broken, and meaningless,” Goddard concluded. “Adjustments that used to go flat after 1990 now go up exponentially. Adjustments which are documented as positive are implemented as negative.”

Respected climatologist and NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer actually showed evidence of what Goddard described as early as April of 2012, saying that “virtually all of the USHCN warming since 1973 appears to be the result of adjustments NOAA has made to the data.” Commenting on the latest findings, Dr. Spencer said that his own examination of the data and corrections to account for urban heat island (UHI) effects “support Steve’s contention that there’s something funny going on in the USHCN data.” He also called the NOAA methodology for adjusting the data “opaque” and said he believes it is prone to serious errors.

This article is essentially covering what I have already noted, that much of the data coming from NASA and NOAA has been seriously compromised, with past temperatures adjusted downward without any clear justification in order to make it appear as if the climate has warmed in recent decades.

I will be talking about this very issue tonight on Coast to Coast.

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The National Science Foundation wants to get rid of some of its older big telescopes, and you can buy them!

9:05 am

The National Science Foundation wants to get rid of some of its older big telescopes, and you can buy them!

We are not talking small here. The biggest is the Green Bank Radio Telescope in West Virginia, which though only fourteen years old is unable to compete scientificially with the new large radio telescope arrays. In truth, when it was mostly built to satisfy the pork ambitions of the late Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.

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In a spacewalk earlier this week, two Russian astronauts on ISS successfully installed the commercial UrtheCast cameras.

8:56 am

In a spacewalk earlier this week, two Russian astronauts on ISS successfully installed the commercial UrtheCast cameras.

The cameras cost $17-million and are capable of beaming down images and high-definition video from the Russian part of the ISS to UrtheCast, a small Vancouver company that struck a deal with the Russian space agency to have its devices blasted into space on a Soyuz rocket and installed in exchange for imagery captured over Russia.

There had been a problem installing these cameras on an earlier spacewalk last month, so this was the second attempt.

Once operational, these cameras will also provide a continuous and free live feed of the Earth for anyone who wishes to view it.

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Eye update

11:23 am

An update on my eye problem. I just returned from the doctor. The retina has reattached itself. It looks like all will heal properly over the next week or so, assuming I continue to be diligent about treatment.

I will probably not resume posting until tomorrow, as today I still have to keep my head positioned a certain way so that the treatment can work properly. (I will explain this all when I can sit in front of the computer for long enough to write something substantial.)

Regardless, thank you to everyone who has wished me well. I appreciate it more than you know.

14 comments

Posting to be light

10:03 pm

For the next few days posting will be very light, as today I developed a detached retina in the right eye and will undergo treatment tomorrow to fix it. The doctor is optimistic, but I will be unable to sit and stare at the computer much after tomorrow’s procedure until probably Wednesday.

If all goes well I should resume posting on Wednesday, with a two hour appearance that night on Coast to Coast to discuss climate, environmentalism, and the corruption of science because of politics.

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“The most dangerous years of the Obama presidency are upon us.”

7:08 pm

“The most dangerous years of the Obama presidency are upon us.”

His conclusion says it all:

Holding the House and taking back the Senate in 2014, while extremely important, cannot stop someone who considers himself above it all. A united front is needed for the next three years. So what is Republican and Congressional leadership planning?

A war on the Tea Party.

This is no time to petty internal politics. It is time to unite against the threat the Democrats pose, which they have now repeatedly admitted to quite openly, which is to deny their opponents any say in the political process.

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A newspaper chain plans to assemble a state-by-state database of every person permitted to carry a concealed weapon.

3:34 pm

Freedom under attack: A newspaper chain plans to assemble a state-by-state database of every person permitted to carry a concealed weapon.

The CEO of the chain has released a statement saying that

[Civitas Media] never had any plans or intentions of publishing in print or online lists of holders of “conceal and carry” permits. Nor will Civitas Media develop databases of permit holders. A poorly crafted internal memo meant to highlight editorial discussions and planning incorrectly indicated that such a database was being planned; it has been considered and rejected.

Maybe so, but that such an idea was even considered by some of the company’s editors tells you a great deal about what those editors believe in, and it surely isn’t privacy, the second amendment, or personal rights.

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Enrollees in Obamacare in California are discovering few doctors or hospitals willing to accept their plans.

10:09 am

Finding out what’s not in it: Enrollees in Obamacare in California are discovering few doctors or hospitals willing to accept their plans.

Worse, they are finding that the lists of doctors and hospitals that supposedly accept Obamacare is wrong.

For his part, Peter Lee, Covered California’s executive director, acknowledged that consumers may be getting misinformation from the state agency or insurer about whether their providers are participating. But, he said, the exchange is prepared to help those consumers get new plans that more suitably meet their needs. “If our directory or the directory of the health plan is wrong and a consumer wants to change plans, we’ll work with them to make sure they can do so,” Lee said in a news call this week. [emphasis mine]

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A Kazakhstan political party is demanding the end of all launches from Baikonur.

9:56 am

Trouble in Russia: A Kazakhstan political party is demanding the end of all Proton launches from Baikonur.

Though I doubt this party’s radical and somewhat ignorant environmental position will gain much traction in a country where Russia’s spaceport is one of its biggest employees, its existence demonstrates why Russia is working hard to get its new spaceport in Vostochny, Russia, finished as quickly as possible.

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The conservative target of a fake investigation by a Wisconsin Democratic prosecutor — having won in court — is now threatening to sue if the prosecutor doesn’t stop the investigation down immediately.

8:35 pm

Pushback: The conservative target of a fake investigation by a Wisconsin Democratic prosecutor — having won in court — is now threatening to sue if the prosecutor doesn’t shut the investigation down immediately.

Eric O’Keefe, who has been identified in media reports as a target of a secret “John Doe” investigation in Wisconsin, today demanded that state prosecutors end their action against him or face a federal civil rights action. O’Keefe is director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, which was also targeted for alleged unlawful “coordination” with Governor Scott Walker’s campaign for fiscal reforms. “This investigation is political payback by elected prosecutors against conservative activists for their political successes in Wisconsin,” stated O’Keefe. “They are violating the constitutional rights of private citizens and must be held accountable.”

In a letter to the prosecutors, O’Keefe’s lawyer, Washington attorney David B. Rivkin, states that the probe has no basis in Wisconsin law and violates Mr. O’Keefe’s First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association. The prosecutors’ legal reasoning, the letter states, “is unsupportable as a matter of law and crystal clear evidence of bad faith.”

“I am confident that any federal court that reviews the facts will see your investigation for what it is, put a stop to it, and hold you publicly accountable,” the letter states.

I have missed the story in which a judge had quashed the prosecutors’ subpoenas, which is good news. That the Wisconsin Club for Growth is going on the offensive now is even better news.

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