Tag: oppression

“When EPA is not ignoring Supreme Court limitations on it, it is blithely disregarding rule-making laws required of it.”

9:00 am

The story that has the quote above outlines the EPA’s recent and past history of ignoring the law and court rulings to write and impose its regulations. It also details the many times the environmental agency has used its ability to impose fines to extort concessions from private landowners, including the recent Colorado mine disaster.

Like the IRS, the EPA has become an out-of-control agency, a haven for fascists eager to use their power to squelch anyone that opposes them. With the former, this power is used by partisan Democrats to help the Democratic Party and hurt its opponents. With the latter, this power is used to destroy private property rights in the name of leftwing environmental fantasies, even if that use of power ends up doing terrible damage to the environment.

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Obamacare forces schools to cut back

11:30 am

Finding out what’s in it: Public school budgets continue to be squeezed by the cost of Obamacare.

They find they either have to cut employee hours, privatize some services, or eliminate health insurance entirely and pay the Obamacare fines. Otherwise, they can’t afford the costs.

This quote however illustrates the educational cost of Obamacare:

School officials say that it’s hard for students to adjust to having multiple part-time educators throughout the day. Chris Johnson, an administrator with the Penn Manor school district in Pennsylvania, told a publication there that, “If you start doing a half day with this person and then a half day with that person, those students don’t react well.”

Even as it bankrupts us financially, Obamacare is also bankrupting us socially. What a disaster. We desperately need to repeal it, as soon as possible.

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A look at Ted Cruz’s election strategy

9:36 am

The presidential election: While other candidates trash Rand Paul, Donald Trump, and their supporters, Cruz refuses to do so, taking the high road in the expectation that he will eventually win those supporters when Paul and Trump drop out of the campaign.

As Cruz is quoted in this different article,

“I would … note that an awful lot of Republicans, including other Republican candidates, have gone out of their way to smack Donald Trump with a stick. Now I think that’s just foolish,” he said. Asked why, Cruz paused and then replied, “Donald Trump had a rally in Phoenix, Ariz. [to which] between 10 and 20 thousand people came out. When you attack and vilify the people at that rally as crazies, it does nothing to help Republicans win in 2016. I’d like every single person at that rally to show up and vote in 2016, knock on doors with energy and passion, and turn this country around. If Washington politicians show contempt and condescension to those [voters,] that is a path to losing at the ballot box.”

Though I don’t post much about election campaigns, this does not mean I do not follow them closely. Most of what happens is childish drivel (such as last week’s debate and the big to-do between Trump and Megan Kelly), but if you look for real nuggets of information about the candidates you can find them. These two stories illustrate the cool-headed strength of Ted Cruz. His track record shows he is not afraid to fight, but it also appears he knows how to choose his fights well.

I have liked Scott Walker for the same reasons. In Wisconsin he was willing to fight, but kept a cool head and held back from fighting over petty issues. The problem for Walker now is that he has seemed too cool-headed during the campaign, unwilling to do anything that might offend anyone. This is not going to win elections. Nor is it going to change things even if he should win.

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The troubles caused by Obamacare in Colorado

8:42 am

Finding out what’s in it: This excellent article outlines honestly the problems Obamacare is causing for the health insurance business, resulting in one-third increases in premiums in Colorado.

The seeds of RMHP’s current financial strain were sewn in 2014 when all health insurance carriers were required by the Affordable Care Act to sell insurance to anyone, without exception, Salazar said. That brought thousands of sick Coloradans with pre-existing conditions into the new health insurance marketplace. People previously denied insurance could now obtain coverage, she said.

In all, Colorado has added about 600,000 people to the health care system since 2013, including 140,000 people who signed up for individual coverage through Connect for Health, the state’s online health insurance marketplace. At the same time, 450,000 people enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Colorado Trust reported.

Many new enrollees were among the sickest because they failed to seek medical treatment in the past because of a lack of insurance, ErkenBrack said. The ACA prevents insurance carriers from pricing insurance products as traditionally done in the past because it prohibits the exclusion of people with pre-existing conditions, Salazar said. Without the ability to exclude or charge someone more in premiums based on health status, it’s much more difficult for insurance actuaries to establish proper premiums. Accurately anticipating the number of claims and their cost, then setting the right premium, is how insurance companies earn income.

To pay for these sick customers the insurance companies are forced to raise rates. In this case, they need a 34% increase to pay the cost. If they don’t get it, they will lose money and eventually go out of business. And if they do get it, they face ruin anyway because no one can afford these rates.

Thank you Democrats and Obama! Your wisdom in destroying the health insurance industry knows no bounds! It is just what the American people wanted!

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The mobile launch building at Vostochny

8:27 am

At their new spaceport at Vostochny, the Russians are building a moveable launch building that will enclose their Soyuz rockets prior to launch.

Painted in elegant blue and white and standing almost 50 meters high, the Mobile Service Tower, MBO (for Mobilnaya Bashnya Obsluzhivaniya), is designed to provide personnel access to the Soyuz rocket during the countdown to liftoff from its launch pad in Vostochny. The structure can be also used to service the pad after launch and to process the rocket in case of an aborted liftoff.

With the tower in place, technicians can easily reach practically any part of the rocket as high as 37 meters above the surface of the launch pad. Internal access bridges of the tower surround the upper portion of the first and second stage, the third stage and the payload fairing.

The article also notes that “for decades, Soviet soldiers and officers and later their Russian civilian successors had to brave winter cold and summer heat preparing Soyuz rockets for launch on open-air gantries in Baikonur and Plesetsk. But in a sign how times have changed, the new generation of rocketeers will be protected from snow and rain with a climate-controlled tower completely enclosing the Soyuz rocket before liftoff from its newest launch pad at Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome.”

The irony here is profound. Big moveable buildings is how NASA has been doing it since Apollo. It is also what Boeing’s Delta family of rockets uses at Vandenberg in California. It is also why the Saturn 5 was and the Delta is so expensive to launch.

SpaceX abandoned such complicated structures in designing its Falcon 9, and instead decided to copy the old Soviet method of simple buildings for horizontal assembly and the simple horizontal transport to the launchpad. This appears to save a lot of money while simplifying rocket assembly.

That the Russians are now copying NASA’s more expensive but fancy mobile building approach means that, once again, their government is making decisions not based on efficiency but the prestige their political decisions can give them. From a competitive perspective, this is not going to benefit the Russia space effort, in the slightest.

But their workers will be more comfortable while they assembly those rockets!

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Mauna Kea visitor center reopens

5:47 pm

The visitor center on Mauna Kea was reopened this weekend after a month closure that supposedly forbid access by the public.

And yet, for that entire month, the state has allowed the protesters opposing construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) to remain camped across the street.

To me, this illustrates where the state’s loyalties lie. They might talk a tough game, but they are really doing nothing to enforce the law and the legally negotiated agreements between the astronomical community and the various Hawaiian cultural institutions that had agreed on the conditions for building TMT. By allowing the protesters to continue to break the law and set up house on the mountain, the state is saying they really want construction to cease.

I say, maybe the time has come for astronomers to agree, and move lock, stock, and barrel south to Chile. In addition, maybe tourists should consider other places to visit, rather than a place that exhibits such hostility to outsiders.

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Houston trying to steal land from two churches

2:09 pm

Fascists: Having failed to intimidate religious leaders when the city of Houston tried to subpoena their sermons, the city is now trying to use eminent domain procedures to shut down two churches.

The fifth ward is located just outside of downtown. Property values in the area have skyrocketed and continue to climb. The City of Houston offered to purchase the churches. When the churches refused, the city came back with threats of using eminent domain to acquire the property as part of an urban development plan.

More here. Texas state law, written and passed after the Supreme Court decision in Kelo v New London, expressly forbids this kind of eminent domain taking. Moreover, the taking appears to specifically violate the first amendment rights of these two churches.

Quick! Guess what to which political party the Houston mayor belongs!

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Auschwitz commandant outraged over Mengele video

10:10 pm

Heh.

Rudolph Hoess, family man and commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, has been desperately trying to restore the camp’s reputation after some damaging remarks by one of its doctors, Joseph Mengele, were caught on tape and posted online.

Dr. Mengele, who oversees medical services at the camp, was recorded casually speaking of a girl who was suffering complications as a result of HitlerCare. The girl, Eva Mozes Kor, complained of fever, trembling, and swollen limbs that resulted from a series of five free government-funded injections. Mengele is seen on the tape laughing off the matter saying, “Too bad she is so young. She has only two weeks to live.”

To Hoess, such behavior is unacceptable. “I want to be clear,” said Hoess, “that I find the tone of Dr. Mengele’s remarks inappropriate, and that he has been properly reprimanded. Furthermore, I wish to emphasize that nobody on the staff at this concentration camp in any way profits from the clothing, valuables, cash, and gold fillings that are reallocated from our guests. While some evidence, which was tragically burned, may have indicated an occasional impropriety, we nevertheless pride ourselves in offering compassionate care at this facility, no matter what.”

Read it all. His outrage at the way the video was obtained will tell you who the real villains are in this story. How dare someone slander the reputation of these fine individuals!

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NASA extends Russian crew ferry contract through 2019 for $490 million

8:09 pm

Lobbying Congress: Claiming that the unwillingness of Congress to fully fund its effort to build commercial manned space ferries, NASA announced today that it has extended its contract with the Russians through 2019, at a cost of $490 million.

For the next fiscal year, House Republicans have proposed allocating nearly $250 million less than the request, while Senate Republicans would offer $300 million less. If Congress doesn’t increase the allocation, Boeing and SpaceX likely will receive orders to immediately suspend all operations either next spring or summer, Bolden said. And if those orders are issued, Bolden said the existing contracts “may need to be renegotiated, likely resulting in further schedule slippage and increased cost.”

According to this article, the extension has also increased the cost per astronaut flight from $71 to $82 million.

The irony here is that I do not believe Congress’s cuts to this program have slowed SpaceX’s effort down in the slightest. I expect that, barring more flight failures or orders from NASA to stop work, they could fly their first manned Dragon flight by 2017.

Boeing however is probably dragging its feet, since it really isn’t that much interested in achieving manned flight as much as squeezing cash out of Congress. It is probably thus eagerly working with NASA in this lobbying effort.

Meanwhile, the Republican idiots in Congress are claiming — falsely — that these cuts are forced on them by sequestration. This is a lie, as they have, at the same time they have cut commercial crew, increased the budget for SLS. If they were really interested in serving the needs of the nation they would have cut SLS, which can’t accomplish anything and is a terrible waste, and sent the money to commercial crew instead.

But then, who said they were interested in serving the needs of the nation? It doesn’t appear that way to me.

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TMT protesters gather outside IAU conference in Hawaii

4:20 pm

Two quotes from the article I think clarify what is going on here. First, one of the protester signs illustrated very clearly the level of ignorance and foolishness of the protesters;

“We don’t want your big toy telescopes on our sacred mountain.”

Then there was this significant point noted in the article:

The demonstrators are a diverse group but are generally led by men and women in their twenties who were educated in modern Hawaiian-language immersion schools. Decades ago, children were beaten for speaking the language; today it is a source of cultural pride and a touchstone for Hawaii’s burgeoning sovereignty movement.

In other words, for the past few decades the public schools in Hawaii have been focused on teaching young Hawaiians to hate American culture and whites. Instead, race and ethnicity come before concepts of freedom and individual rights. How nice. (If you don’t believe me spend just a little time studying what these native peoples courses teach. I’ve seen it here in Arizona as well as in New York. They really do teach anti-Americanism and a hatred of whites.)

However, considering that Hawaii has been controlled exclusively by leftwing Democrats for decades, no one should be surprised.

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Texas government officials kidnap 11 children illegally from parents

9:29 am

Fascists: Because of a single false report to Child Protection Services (CPS), government officials illegally kidnapped the eleven children from their parents, and are now imposing their rule on the family.

The mother was in the hospital for three days being treated for pancreatitis. During that time period, her husband came to visit twice, bringing their youngest baby with him while leaving the remaining kids under the care of the oldest kids, 16, 14, and 12 years old, a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Members of a church the family formerly attended reported this to CPS. CPS then lied to a visiting judge, claiming the children had been left alone for three days, in order to get the court order to remove them. Moreover,

The order for the removal of the children was signed by visiting Judge Curt Henderson, while the sitting judge was on vacation. The sitting judge had reportedly previously denied the removal. According to protocols, the visiting judge reportedly should not have signed the emergency removal order without notifying the parents’ attorneys first. The apparent violation is believed to be the reason that the children were returned home.

In addition, they now have less than a week to find a new place to live.

They also have to find a house to move to, and move, by August 8, because a police officer who accompanied the social worker decided to phone the Rembis’ landlord and allegedly accused them of violating their lease. They received the eviction notice the day after the children were seized. When no lease violations were found, the landlord reportedly decided not to renew their lease. They still have to move. [emphasis mine]

Worse, even though the removal was illegal, CPS now has its claws in the family. If the parents do not do exactly as the government demands it will then steal the children again, and will be in a better position to make that removal stick.

Read the whole story. It will make you ill.

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Twenty arrested for blocking trucks to different mountain telescope in Hawaii

10:23 pm

Twenty protesters were arrested on Friday trying to block trucks leaving for the summit of Haleakala on the island of Maui, as part of the work building the new Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope there.

This protest did not involve Mauna Kea. It suggests that the hostility to astronomy and outsiders on Hawaii is growing. It also suggests to me that maybe astronomers and outsiders should consider going somewhere else for their research and tourism. Let’s find out how happy these Hawaiian protesters will be if the money these industries bring to their island disappears.

Another article notes that seven others were arrested on Mauna Kea as well. It thus appears that the Hawaiian government is finally moving to enforce the law there.

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Arrested for playing Star-Spangled Banner on July 4, man reject plea deal

10:18 am

Fascists: A man who was arrested on July 4 for playing the Star-Spangled Banner on the street, has refused a plea deal.

What can I say? That the police even considered arresting him is beyond reasonable, no matter what excuses they give. That they did it anyway, and that the state has proceeded to press charges, illustrates again the madness that is taking over our society.

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Obamacare co-ops losing money

9:26 am

Finding out what’s in it: 22 of the 23 nonprofit co-ops created under Obamacare to replace for-profit insurance companies lost money, with the majority failing badly to sign up customers.

Under President Barack Obama’s overhaul, taxpayers provided $2.4 billion in loans to get the co-ops going, but only one out of 23 — the one in Maine — made money last year, said the report out Thursday. Another one, the Iowa/Nebraska co-op, was shut down by regulators over financial concerns. The audit by the Health and Human Services inspector general’s office also found that 13 of the 23 lagged far behind their 2014 enrollment projections.

The probe raised concerns about whether federal loans will be repaid, and recommended closer supervision by the administration as well as clear standards for recalling loans if a co-op is no longer viable. Just last week, the Louisiana Health Cooperative announced it would cease offering coverage next year, saying it’s “not growing enough to maintain a healthy future.” About 16,000 people are covered by that co-op.

In other words, the $2.4 billion was really a pay-off to friends of the Democratic Party, taken from the taxpayers and handed over to that party’s supporters. The Obama administration will never demand that money back, nor do I expect it to increase its oversight of these co-ops.

Read the whole article. It illustrates once again how terrible a law Obamacare is, and how it must be repealed — in full — if the American economy is ever going to have a hope of recovering from the slump it has been in since 2007.

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“I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally in contempt.”

9:14 am

A federal judge yesterday threatened to hold IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in contempt if he and the IRS continued to disobey his orders to release newly recovered Lois Lerner emails in connection with that agency’s harassment of conservatives.

During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.” He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, “Why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in contempt.” Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney he had the ability to detain him for contempt. Warning he would tolerate no further disregard of his orders, Judge Sullivan said, “I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally in contempt.”

Until he actually throws some of the IRS officials or their lawyers into jail, however, nothing is going to change.

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Cruz calls McConnell a liar in the Senate

9:47 am

Most interesting: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today called Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) a liar in a speech on the Senate floor.

“We had a Senate Republican lunch where I stood up and I asked the majority leader very directly, what was the deal that was just cut on [trade legislation], and was there a deal for the Export-Import Bank? It was a direct question. I asked the majority leader in front of all the Republican senators. The majority leader was visibly angry with me that I would ask such a question, and the majority leader looked at me and said, “There is no deal, there is no deal, there is no deal.”

“Like Saint Peter, he repeated it three times,” Cruz added.

[Cruz also said,] “What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again, was a simple lie,” Cruz said Friday morning. “We know now that when the majority leader looks us in the eyes and makes an explicit commitment, that he is willing to say things that he knows are false. That has consequences for how this body operates.”

I have embedded video of this speech below the fold.

The increasing public anger expressed by Cruz here against the Republican leadership is a sign of a growing power struggle within that party. About 20% to 30% of the Republican Party feels more loyalty to the Democrats and the Washington power structure than they do to the conservative voters that have supported that party. Unfortunately, it appears that this small minority in the Republican party is presently in charge.

Should the conservative majority ever unify to dump their liberal leadership, there is the risk that many of these Republican leaders will then abandon the party and join the Democrats. The Democrats will then likely regain control of Congress, but if so, they will at least be then fighting an opponent that is unified in support of conservative principles, rather than a party run by two-faced leaders who campaign as conservatives and, having won their elections, immediately team up with the Democrats to block any conservative reform.

It is also possible that these fake conservatives, once kicked out of the leadership, will meekly join the conservative majority, knowing that to join the Democrats will likely get most of them tossed from office at the next election.

Either way, the heavens are beginning to align in favor of a major power shift within the Republican Party. Stay tuned.
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Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) discovers why he is an idiot

3:38 pm

In a Senate hearing on Thursday, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) lambasted Secretary of State John Kerry about the Iran deal he negotiated.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker on Thursday offered a scathing indictment of the Obama administration’s shifting goals and rationales for its nuclear deal with Iran, going so far as to tell Secretary of State John Kerry that “I believe you’ve been fleeced” by Iran. Corker said the agreement reached July 14 in Vienna would “codify a perfectly aligned pathway for Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”

Turning to Kerry, who took notes as he spoke, Corker said: “What you have really done here is you have turned Iran from being a pariah to Congress – Congress – being a pariah.”

Actually, it was Corker who turned Congress into a pariah. It was his bill, approved by a Republican Congress, that has made a rejection of the Iran deal almost impossible. While the Constitution requires treaties to only be approved with a two-thirds Senate majority, Corker wrote a bill and pushed it through Congress that allows this particular treaty to be approved automatically, unless two-thirds of both Houses of Congress vote to override it. In other words, instead of needing only 34 votes to kill it, Corker’s bill now requires 67 in the Senate and 292 in the House.

Why he and the Republicans in Congress did this suggests strongly to me that they are either all idiots, or far more corrupt and tied to power than anyone imagined. Unwilling to fight for our country or for the principles for which it was founded, they instead bent over and begged to be screwed by this corrupt President and Democratic Party that wishes nothing more than to destroy the free society we once had.

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GAO finds IRS still focused on harassing conservatives

10:26 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The GAO has found that targeting of conservatives by the IRS is still possible because the agency has not taken sufficient steps to prevent it.

The GAO now says that IRS political “targeting is indeed possible in the audit process” for nonprofits, largely due to poor agency oversight and controls. “Unfortunately, the IRS has not taken sufficient steps to prevent targeting Americans based on their personal beliefs,” the GAO says.

Specifically, The GAO found that “control deficiencies” do “increase the risk” that the IRS nonprofit unit “could select organizations for examinations in an unfair manner—for example, based on an organization’s religious, educational, political or other views.”

Then there’s this tidbit:

The GAO also found that a quarter of the IRS nonprofit audit case files it reviewed had no description of any allegation that triggered the audit to begin with. The IRS doesn’t sufficiently document why it even started nonprofit audits in the first place, the watchdog group says. All of these “weaknesses undermine the integrity of tax administration,” the GAO warns.

Instead, the GAO found that IRS audits are usually triggered because someone complained. And since IRS employees are almost all Democrats and very partisan, the only complaints they take seriously are Democratic ones. Thus, the audits are mostly against conservatives, and serve to squelch political opposition to the Democratic Party.

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Iran’s parliament questioning Iran nuclear deal

11:24 am

Democracy in action! Iran’s parliament is likely to demand changes to Iran deal before voting for its approval.

The ironies here are tragic. While their parliament stands up for its constitutional rights, our Congress, run by Republicans, has ceded its power to the President, with the Senate giving up its constitutional right to only approve treaties with a two-third majority. Instead, they got down on their knees and handed Obama the power to make this very bad treaty without their full consent. What idiots.

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Obamacare increases are only going to get worse

12:12 pm

Finding out what’s in it: After Obamacare`s government help for insurance companies ends and consumers have bear the full cost of this monstrous law, the costs will skyrocket again.

By 2023, I estimate that the average family plan could be 61% more expensive than it is in 2015, with individual plans only one or two percentage points behind. These increases are so high that direct taxpayer subsidies to consumers are unlikely to keep up. So the cost, both financially and politically, will become increasingly intolerable.

Thank you Obama and the Democratic Party for bringing us this present. We couldn`t have done it without you!

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Apple makes the conservative internet vanish

11:55 am

The state religion will not be challenged! Apple`s new news service considers leftwing news outlets the only outlets worth listing.

Their unwillingness to consider almost any conservative sites for listing not only illustrates their biased leftwing perspective, it also shows us their deep-seated close-mindedness. They believe in liberalism/socialism/big government so much they make it a point to refuse to even read opposing sites, no less deny access to them.

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Islamic attack in France

11:28 am

Peace in our time: Even as a jihadist attacked military recruiting offices in Tennessee this week, there was also a major terrorist attack in France, with all evidence pointing at Islamic terrorists as the attackers.

The attack, three separate explosions at a petrochemical plant, has interestingly not been reported in detail by a single mainstream news source in the U.S. I wonder why. Could it be that these events put the lie to President Obama’s Iran deal, that agreeing to this deal will only make our lives more dangerous and will empower the radical and violent Islamic movement, which is as virulent in Iran as it is in the Islamic State?

Nah. It’s all in my imagination. President Obama couldn’t be wrong. He wouldn’t lie to us.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court declares illegal Democratic SWAT team raids on conservatives

1:35 pm

Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that the Democratic Party investigations and SWAT team raids on conservatives were illegal and “unsupported in either reason or law.”

As the court noted,

The special prosecutor has disregarded the vital principle that in our nation and our state political speech is a fundamental right and is afforded the highest level of protection. The special prosecutor’s theories, rather than ‘assur[ing] [the] unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people’ . . . instead would assure that such political speech will be investigated with paramilitary-style home invasions conducted in the pre-dawn hours and then prosecuted and punished.

In other words, the Democrats in Wisconsin, disliking the fact that Republicans and Scott Walker had legally won elections and were publicly criticizing them, tried to shut their opponents up by using the power of the government to literally destroy them. It is important to repeat exactly what they did:

On October 3, 2013, multiple Wisconsin conservatives were awakened by a persistent pounding on the door, their houses were illuminated by floodlights, and police — sometimes with guns drawn — poured into their homes. Once inside, the investigators turned the private residences of these innocent conservative citizens “upside down,” seeking an extraordinarily broad range of documents and information. These raids were supplemented by subpoenas that secured for investigators massive amounts of electronic information.

This is the behavior of storm-troopers and tyrants. Thankfully, the court in Wisconsin has now forcibly agreed, and declared these actions fundamentally wrong.

This ruling means that the lawsuits against the Democratic prosecutor and everyone who was involved in these abusive investigations and raids will go forward with great vigor.

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A Canadian man faces jail time for merely disagreeing with two feminists on Twitter.

10:16 am

Fascism: A Canadian man is now threatened with six months in jail because he dared to post on Twitter his disagreement with two feminist activists.

Read the article. These feminists fit the description of fascists so closely we could put their pictures in the dictionary next to the word.

Note also that this is in Canada, which does not have a first amendment comparable to what we have here in the U.S. Then again, the first amendment here in the U.S. is increasingly being ignored by those in power, so I’m not sure what advantage it gives us at the moment.

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The government-run Russian space program trims its budget

9:27 am

In the heat of competition: Even as the Russians consolidate their entire aerospace industry into a single entity run by the government, the government has revealed that — due to the country’s recent economic troubles — the budget for space will have to be trimmed.

I found the juxtaposition of these two stories today quite revealing, and illustrates to me the fundamental problem with the Russian Soviet-style government-run approach. Under the competitive, capitalist system that the U.S. is finally beginning to adopt for its space program, when the economy forces budget cuts, competition naturally requires the different companies in the industry to lower costs and innovate. If they don’t, their competitors will get the business. This in turn keeps the industry vibrant, and actually acts to end the tough economic times.

In the Soviet-style system, there is no incentive to compete or innovate. There is only one company, no competition, and everything is decided by a single leadership on top. The government can demand innovation by command from above, but this is not the most effective way to make it happen. Some will obey the commands and try harder. Most however will simply hunker down during hard times, taking fewer risks to cover their asses so they won’t be a target for those budget cuts.

Moreover, with a single government entity running everything, if the economy goes sour the budget must be cut to the entire industry. And since the cuts are determined by a handful of powerful government officials at the top, using money they obtained by coercion (tax-dollars) and not from customers who voluntarily purchased the product, they have no guidance on what parts of the industry to cut. They are just as likely cut the best because it involves too much risk, or because their buddies in a poorly run agency bribed them more.

Capitalism, however, provides competing independent companies, some of which are going to have their own sources of income that might flow independent of a shrinking economy. And it is quality that determines who lives and who dies, not corrupt and powerful government officials. The better companies gain customers, while the less efficient companies naturally fall by the wayside. Thus, during hard economic times competitive capitalism actually works to increase an industry’s efficiency while simultaneously helping to reinvigorate the industry.

This all suggests to me once again that while the consolidation in Russia of its aerospace industry might provide them a short-term burst of success, in the long run they will find it difficult to keep up with America’s private companies.

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Obamacare gives money to fake applicants

3:57 pm

Finding out what’s in it: In a test of the Obamacare website, the GAO enrolled 11 fake applicants last year, five of whom were then automatically reinrolled this year, with several getting their health insurance subsidies raised.

HealthCare.gov does not appear to be set up to detect fraud, GAO audits and investigations chief Seto Bagdoyan said in prepared testimony for a Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday. A copy was provided to The Associated Press. HealthCare.gov’s document-processing contractor “is not required to seek to detect fraud,” said Bagdoyan. “The contractor personnel involved in the document-verification process are not trained as fraud experts and do not perform antifraud duties.”

The Obama adminstration’s response? To paraphrase: Well, we don’t think a lot of fraud is going on, so we are not worried. Sounds like the negligent response of OPM officials when warned that they needed to improve their security system or their files would be hacked.

Then there is this, predicted by conservatives who warned us that creating Obamacare would be the equivalent of putting the DMV in charge of our healthcare:

GAO’s investigation also uncovered a problem that bedevils millions of real people dealing with the program’s new bureaucracy: confusing and inaccurate communication.

Investigators said their bogus enrollees received unclear correspondence that failed to identify the problems with their applications. “Rather than stating a message directly, correspondence instead was conditional or nonspecific, stating the applicant may be affected by something, and then leaving it to the applicant to parse through details to see if they were indeed affected,” said Bagdoyan.

The fake enrollees also got some perplexing instructions from HealthCare.gov. Eight of the 11 were asked to submit additional documentation to prove their citizenship and identity. But the list of suitable paperwork detailed documents for verifying income instead.

Obviously, this is proof we should vote for Democrats again, who imposed this law upon us. Then again, until we get different people running the Republican Party, it is unlikely it will make a difference.

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Democratic fake skepticism, and Republican failure theater

3:35 pm

Link here. Essentially, the writer is disgusted both by the fake skepticism of the Democrats, who are going to eventually back Obama’s cave-in deal to Iran, and the Republican’s failure theater, which abdicated their power to prevent that deal from being approved.

The vote is not in fact to be had; the vote of course already was had, two months ago, when Bob Corker [Republican] proposed the “compromise” that said that deal would become law automatically, subject to a negative vote by Congress, but Obama gets to veto that, meaning Obama only needs one third support in both bodies to carry the day.

This is an inversion of the usual scheme wherein it requires a two thirds positive vote to carry the day in his favor; a mere one third minority could have blocked him.

No more. A one-third minority now wins the day for him.

So the actual vote, the actual History, the important deed, passed by two months ago when few of us were paying attention.

The coming vote will be the performance of Failure Theater, debuting to a world hungry for some dramatic political entertainment; but plays are of course scripted, and thus, their conclusions are foreordained, and this particular bit of stagecraft was written and finalized months ago by Bob Corker, with every single Republican voting in favor of it, save one — Tom Cotton — who objected, and save another, Ted Cruz, who made himself absent.

I for one agree. Isn’t it interesting how the public, in the 2014 election, made it very clear that they wanted Obama’s agenda stopped, and in response most of these bastards in Congress, from both parties, have conspired to foil the will of the people.

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