Tag: government

The IPCC has decided that it is too difficult to purge non-peer-reviewed envionmental activist press releases from its next report.

3:37 pm

The IPCC has decided that it is too difficult to purge non-peer-reviewed envionmental activist press releases from its next report. Instead,

[A]ny information they choose to use will be considered peer reviewed just by being posted on the Internet by the IPCC.

In addition, the IPCC has decided “to impose gender and geographical quotas on IPCC membership,” rather than simple pick the best scientists.

And climate scientists wonder why the public no longer believes anything they say.

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The Social Security Trust Fund will start losing value in 2013.

3:19 pm

The day of reckoning looms: The Social Security Trust Fund will start losing value in 2013, not 2020 as claimed.

In 2010, Social Security’s Office of the Chief Actuary projected that this interest income would keep the trust fund growing in real value through 2020. The 2011 projections moved this date to 2018, and the recently released 2012 projections pushed the date to 2012, meaning that the trust fund will start declining in real value next year. After 2013, the trust fund is projected to decline by greater amounts each year until becoming exhausted in 2033.

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“And ask yourself this, if they’re that egregious at lying on that issue, what else are they lying about?”

10:23 pm

“And ask yourself this, if they’re that egregious at lying on that issue, what else are they lying about?”

Meanwhile, on the same day that the President invoked executive privilege to avoid giving Congress emails and documents concerning the Fast-and-Furious gunrunning scandal, the Attorney General admitted lying in his testimony to a House committee, and that same committee voted to hold the Attorney General in contempt, ABC News has as its lead story … the heat wave in the northeast.

As I’ve said many times before, if you depend on television news to find out what’s going in the world, you’re not merely uninformed, you are misinformed.

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The TSA’s security checkpoint of the future.

9:57 pm

The TSA’s security checkpoint of the future.

After checking their luggage, passengers would identify themselves not with driver’s licenses and paper boarding passes, but by scanning fingerprints or irises to prove they have an electronic ticket. Passengers would walk with their carry-ons through a screening tunnel, where they’d undergo electronic scrutiny — replacing what now happens at as many as three different stops as they’re scanned for metal objects, non-metallic items and explosives. …

If screeners notice anything suspicious, a passenger would still be pulled aside and possibly patted down.

There’s a lot more. Read it all. For example, there’s this quote:

The so-called riskiest or unknown passengers would face the toughest scrutiny, including questioning and more sensitive electronic screening. Those who voluntarily provide more information about themselves to the government would be rewarded with faster passage.

I call this Orwell’s 1984 come to life, a totalitarian’s dream and a free person’s nightmare. Once in place, what’s to prevent this from spreading to all phases of life? Nothing. You give government this kind of power and it will use it, and that use will not be for your benefit, but for the government’s benefit alone.

I fear that freedom is dying, one security checkpoint at a time.

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The empty bench of the Democratic Party.

4:03 pm

The empty bench of the Democratic Party.

In comparing the potential Presidential candidates from both the Democrat and Republican parties, this article leaves one with the impression that the future is definitely not with the Democratic Party. As admitted by its own membership, its leadership is old, it has very few candidates with national stature, and the depth of the party is shallower than a pond in Tucson in summer. Meanwhile, the Republicans have many young new faces that already have national standing.

Though the article likes to blame this situation on internal forces within the parties, I see it as the result of actual elections and the circumstances of the time. The Democrats have increasingly appeared bankrupt when it comes to dealing with today’s fundamental problems, especially the out-of-control spending of government at all levels. Meanwhile, Republican candidates, especially those associated with the tea party movement, have come forward with some fresh, reasonable, and thoughtful ideas for dealing with these problems.

Faced with such a choice, it is not surprising that the Republicans have a deep bench compared to the Democrats.

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The House yesterday proposed a spending bill that would cut the EPA’s budget to $7 billion, 17% less than what it received in 2012.

3:09 pm

Progress: The House yesterday proposed a spending bill that would cut the EPA’s budget to $7 billion, 17% less than what it received in 2012.

Considering the federal debt, this is a reasonable cut, as a $7 billion budget would be comparable to the EPA’s budget numbers in the early 2000s, and would hardly cripple that agency.

On a more depressing note, the Senate is moving forward on a bi-partisan deal to pass a massive farm bill, loaded with pork that would spend almost a trillion dollars over the next decade.

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Eric Holder has retracted his false claim that the Bush administration had started the program allowing guns to be smuggled illegally to Mexico.

10:51 am

More Fast-and-Furious news: Eric Holder has retracted his false claim that the Bush administration had started the program allowing guns to be smuggled illegally to Mexico.

The Justice Department has retracted a second statement made to the Senate Judiciary Committee. During a hearing last week, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that his predecessor, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, had been briefed about gunwalking in Operation Wide Receiver. Now, the Department is retracting that statement and claiming Holder “inadvertently” made that claim to the Committee.

In other words, Holder has now admitted that he lied when he was testifying to Congress.

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President Obama today invoked executive privilege in order to withhold documents demanded by a House committee investigating the “Fast and Furious” gun scandal.

9:40 am

Cover up: President Obama today invoked executive privilege in order to withhold documents demanded by a House committee investigating the “Fast and Furious” gun scandal.

In related news, the union that represents Border Patrol agents called today for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder.

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According to FBI statistics released last week, violent crime has declined for the fifth year in a row, the 18th time in the last 20 years.

5:11 pm

More guns, less crime: According to FBI statistics released last week, violent crime has declined for the fifth year in a row, the 18th time it has declined in the last 20 years.

Facts are hard things. You can claim that more guns will cause more violent crime, but the facts remain what they are: Wherever there are gun control laws, crime is higher. Wherever people are allowed to own guns, crime goes down.

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The pork of Obamacare

3:00 pm

The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), created by Obamacare, announced its first round of grants today, part of a funding program of fifty “pilot projects” totaling $30 million.

It didn’t take much research for me to conclude that, while some of this work might be useful, most of it sounds like bureaucratic claptrap. For example, consider the description Nature gives for these three grants:
» Read more

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A Wyoming think tank is suing the Federal Election Commission in behalf of three Wyoming residents who were denied the right to run a political ad hostile to Barack Obama.

4:17 pm

A Wyoming think tank is suing the Federal Election Commission in behalf of three Wyoming residents who were denied the right to run a political ad hostile to Barack Obama.

What was that language again? I think the words are “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

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“So come and get me if you must, Mr. President. I will not bow to your wicked regulation.”

2:21 pm

We’ve only just begun: “So come and get me if you must, Mr. President. I will not bow to your wicked regulation.”

James Dobson is not to be taken lightly. Under the Obamacare HHS contraceptive mandate, his organization, Focus on the Family, would not qualify for any exemption and would be required to pay for contraceptives and abortion drugs. And if Dobson’s organization defies the federal government here, expect very loud fireworks, as Focus is very large with a very large following.

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Congressional investigators now have documents that prove senior officials in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice approved Operation Fast and Furious, whereby the DOJ allowed guns to be purchased illegally and then smuggled back to Mexico.

2:10 pm

Congressional investigators now have documents that prove senior officials in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice approved Operation Fast and Furious, whereby Justice allowed guns to be purchased illegally and then smuggled back to Mexico.

Hey, so what that Eric Holder committed perjury before Congress? So what that people, including an American Border Patrol agent, have been murdered using these smuggled guns? So what that the Department of Justice, whose task it is to enforce the law, worked to aid Mexican drug cartels in obtaining illegal guns?

What’s the big deal? Mitt Romney was mean to someone when he was in high school forty years ago!

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The debt of the federal government is projected to be nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2037, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced Tuesday.

10:26 am

The day of reckoning looms: The debt of the federal government is projected to be nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2037, the Congressional Budget Office announced Tuesday.

This CBO report actually supposed to be encouraging, as it indicates that the day of doom has been pushed back a whopping two years! Yowza! Let’s pop the corks on the champagne bottles and start celebrating!

Sadly, the article also has this ridiculous quote:

CBO’s latest prediction is similar to its 2011 report despite the $2.1 trillion in budget cuts enacted in last August’s debt-ceiling deal between the White House and Congress.

Nothing was cut by that deal. All they did was trim the rate of growth. For any journalist to continue to participate in this fraud is sickening.

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The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has asked the Utah state legislature for permission to scan the license plates of all cars driving on Interstate 15.

7:18 pm

What could go wrong? The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has asked the Utah state legislature for permission to scan the license plates of all cars driving on Interstate 15.

Worse, they are already scanning plates in Texas and California, and plan to add Arizona to the list.

I especially like this quote from a Utah legislator in response to the request. “I’ll be quite frank with you. A lot of us in Utah don’t trust the federal government.” Do tell.

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More colleges have announced plans to drop their student healthplans due costs imposed by Obamacare.

10:51 am

Repeal it! More colleges have announced plans to drop their student healthplans due costs imposed by Obamacare.

Lenoir-Rhyne University of Hickory, N.C., the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., and Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa—all private liberal-arts colleges—have told students they are dropping school-sponsored limited-benefit insurance plans starting in the fall. The three colleges said students’ premiums would have gone up roughly tenfold, and they said they could no longer justify making students sign up if they didn’t have their own insurance. [emphasis mine]

And if they don’t drop their healthplan?

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh said its 2011-2012 premium was $440 for a plan that covered up to $10,000 for each injury or sickness. Officials said the premium for the coming year would be $1,300 to $1,600 for a plan that meets the new requirements. The school will continue to require students to carry insurance, either through the school or not.

How’s that hope and change working out for you, students?

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A bank run by an Obama bundler has gotten an Republican-led House committee to exempt that bank from provisions of the Frank-Dodd act, saving the bank $300 million.

5:07 pm

Bipartisan corruption: A bank run by an Obama fund-raiser has gotten an Republican-led House committee to exempt that bank from provisions of the Dodd-Frank act, saving the bank $300 million.

Any law that allows legislators to grant individual waivers isn’t a law at all but a form of extortion: Pay up or you won’t get your exemption. Dodd-Frank, as well as much of all the legislation passed by Congress in the past decade, should be repealed so that everyone gets the exemption.

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