Tag: oppression

Another Obamacare law delay

9:52 pm

The law is for little people: The Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it will delay for five months enforcing a part of Obamacare pertaining to small businesses.

It seems that under Obamacare businesses are no longer allowed to offer employees spending accounts which can be used cover a portion of the cost of buying individual health plans. (Another example of not being allowed to keep your plan, even if you like it. Period.) If they continue to offer these accounts they could get fined $100 per day per employee. If they don’t, their employees might find themselves without health insurance.

So, the Obama administration is not going to enforce another Obamacare provision for five more months, even though this law was Obama’s gift to the nation and was so perfect it wasn’t necessary to discuss its passage with anyone outside the Democratic Party. In fact, it was so perfect the Democrats themselves didn’t need to read the law before they voted for it!

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World still terrorized by ‘‘Random Angry Unknown Folks’’ the Obama adminstration declares

9:19 am

Heh. Link here.

The world has been rocked almost daily throughout the past few years by shootings, stabbings, bombings, and other atrocities throughout Western societies and the Middle East by what the White House has come to be officially call “Random Angry Unknown Folks” (RAUFs), and the Obama administration will “quadruple” on its efforts to stop these seemingly motiveless random angry people who have been plaguing the world with their seemingly “senseless, pointless, motivation-lacking non-descript acts aimed at apparently no one in particular”, according to State Department Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki.

It gets better. Read it all.

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Judge rules that Christians should be persecuted if they disagree with gays

9:56 pm

Fascists: A judge in Washington state ruled Wednesday that a florist should be “personally ruined” because her Christian faith prevented her from promoting same-sex marriage.

“The message of these rulings is unmistakable: The government will bring about your personal and professional ruin if you don’t help celebrate same-sex marriage,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kristen Waggoner. “The two men had no problem getting the flowers they wanted,” she said. “They received several offers for free flowers, and the marketplace gives them plenty of options. Laws that are supposed to prohibit discrimination might sound good, but the government has begun to use these laws to hurt people – to force them to conform and to silence and punish them if they don’t violate their religious beliefs on marriage.”

Once again, the issue here was not the oppression of gays, since these two men were not prevented by anyone from getting married, were not denied flowers or wedding cakes or any options for celebrating their wedding. All they were denied was the ability to force someone who disagreed with them about same-sex marriage to participate in their same-sex wedding. For that thought crime, they — and the government of Washington — have decided to destroy someone.

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How scientists lose the average layman

7:55 pm

Link here.

A superb essay. I have written about this myself numerable times, but sadly our modern elite intellectual society finds it somehow impossible to get the point, which Shaw sums up very well in his last paragraph:

The point of all this is simply to say that scientific conclusions change over the ages. Complicated things take time. But when you come out and start lecturing us – or worse, start telling us how the government should orient policy – based on your own favorite theory of the day while not yet proving it to a satisfactory degree (even to we simpletons) then you can expect some of us to push back and demand you show your work. And it’s not because the pastor told us to think that way on Sunday.

Read it all. It also illustrates quite well why increasingly the public does not trust scientists or journalists when it comes to hot button issues like climate change.

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Islamic cleric insists Sun orbits Earth

4:04 pm

Islamic science: At student discussion on Sunday an Islamic cleric insisted that the Sun orbits the Earth.

Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari told a student that the Earth is “stationary and does not move,” according to Al-Arabiya, justifying the statement with religious texts and statements. But then he tried to debunk the common knowledge about the Earth’s rotation using “logic,” in a visual demonstration that prompted the speech to go viral. “First of all, where are we now?” he asked. “We go to Sharjah airport to travel to China by plane, clear?!” Khaibari argued, confusingly, that the Earth cannot rotate because it would render air travel impossible.

Even if Islam was peaceful, which it is not, it remains a problem because it apparently also encourages this kind of ignorance.

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The crooks in the tea party movement

9:41 am

John Hawkins has released a blockbuster report revealing which tea pary/Republican PACS are legitimate and helpful to conservative candidates and which are nothing more than scams.

The bottom line:

If you gave a dollar to the gold standard of PACs that we researched, Club for Growth Action, 88 cents of every dollar you gave went to a candidate. On the other hand, there were a number of PACs that gave 10% or less of the money they received to candidates. When there’s a 78 cents per dollar difference in the effective use of money between the top of the heap and more than half of the PACs we researched, there’s an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed.

It is essential that conservatives review carefully the graph at the link before they give money to anyone.

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What the Islamic State really wants

4:00 pm

Link here. This is an incredibly detailed and intelligent background analysis into what the Islamic State is, what it stands for, the roots of those principles, and the dangers it presents to the civilized world.

The article is long but worth every word. Number one take-away from this essay, however, are these two paragraphs:

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal. [emphasis in original]

Another quote almost as important:

[T]he Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. The lack of objective reporting from its territory makes the true extent of the slaughter unknowable, but social-media posts from the region suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks.

I am once again reminded of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, where he bluntly told us what he intended to do, and was ignored. We ignore the Islamic State and what it stands for at our very very great peril.

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A real hero of freedom

3:10 pm

Who, when faced with numerous death threats from Islamic fundamentalists — including an actual physical attack last week that killed one and wounded three — had this to say, “I’m not going to let this attack scare me. I’m going to continue just like I always have.”

Such an individual should be heralded by all in our society and backed up with so much firepower from everyone that no terrorist would dare attack him. Sadly, this is not the case.

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Democrats discover that Obamacare fines are costly

10:23 am

Finding out what’s in it: Congressional Democrats are pleading with the Obama administration to create an illegal waiver of the Obamacare tax penalities for people who fail to obtain health insurance by this past weekend’s deadline.

Idiots. They have voted numerous times in lockstep for Obamacare, resisting all efforts to repeal or even amend it. Yet when the law they supported and forced upon us is finally about to take effect they suddenly discover they don’t like it?

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More Obamacare website problems

9:40 pm

On the final weekend before the deadline to sign up for health insurance, the Obamacare website had a serious technical problem that prevented some people from completing their enrollment.

After you read the description below of the problem, I dare you to tell me you that we are now better off with this law:

Some people trying to get coverage hadn’t been able to get their income information electronically verified. That’s crucial because the amount of financial assistance to help pay premiums is based on people’s income.

The health care law offers health insurance to people who don’t have coverage on the job. More than 8 in 10 of those who apply qualify for help. Without it, most can’t afford the coverage. The IRS handles income verification for the HealthCare.gov website. In a statement, Hill said the problem was due to issues with “external verification sources.”

The glitch seemed to affect people with new applications. People who previously submitted their income details — but hadn’t completed the final step of picking a plan — were still able to do so.

This is a wonderful example of finding out what’s in it. The law makes the process of getting health insurance so difficult and complex, with so many different hands in the process, that it is literally impossible for problems and “glitches” (oh how I hate the bureaucratic word) not to happen. Either something is going to go wrong, or you will have to wait forever to get everyone to agree to the process.

But don’t worry. That it doesn’t work is irrelevant. It was the good intentions of Obama and the Democrats that really matter. Who cares if their ideas are stupid, unworkable, or foolish? They care!

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Gunmen attack free-speech event in Copenhagen

5:49 pm

The religion of peace strikes again: At a free-speech event in Copenhagen — organized by backers of one of the cartoonists who ridiculed Mohammad — masked gunmen unleashed a hail of bullets, killing one and wounding three.

The French ambassador was there and has reported that this was clearly a terrorist attack similar to the murderous attack on the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Update: Three people are wounded when a gunman fired shots at a Copenhagen synagogue. It is not yet clear if this attack is linked to the attack above.

Obama would claim these are all random attacks. But then, delusional people will believe anything.

In related news, Islamic terrorists attacked a polio vaccination team in Pakistan, killing one and wounding another. The article also reports that in a separate incident two polio workers and two security guards have gone missing.

At what point will our intellectual elites get their heads out of their asses and recognize the war that Islam is waging on the free world?

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Abraham Lincoln – a tribute on his birthday

6:01 pm

An evening pause: As I have done before, on Lincoln’s birthday it behooves us to remember him.

We should also remind ourselves, especially in this time of increasing anger, bigotry, and violence, of these words from his second inaugural address, spoken in the final days of a violent war that had pitted brother against brother in order to set other men free:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

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The endless and all-compassing terrors of global warming

4:23 pm

Want to know what scientists have predicted climate change will do to the Earth? Go to ClimateChangePredictions.org, where they keep a full list of every prediction they can find.

I especially like the category “Having it both ways,” where they list different predictions that insisted on opposite consequences. For example did you know that global warning is going to bring both “less rain” and “more rain”, Other predictions are equally amusing.

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IRS steals widow’s savings

11:11 am

Theft by government: The IRS has seized nearly $19,000 of a widow’s savings because it didn’t like the manner in which she deposited it in the bank.

After [an October policy change that was supposed to stop most of these kinds of cash confiscations], federal prosecutors in Iowa agreed to return money the IRS seized from two people accused of structuring, including a restaurant owner who had $33,000 taken and a doctor who fought to get back $344,000 in earnings from his medical practice. But prosecutors declined to drop the civil forfeiture case over $18,775 the IRS seized from [the widow Janet] Malone.

Instead, they added a misdemeanor criminal charge last week alleging she willfully violated the law, after her husband had been warned about the practice four years ago. Malone is expected to plead guilty next week and let the government keep the money, under a plea agreement filed Monday. The charge carries up to one year in jail and a $250,000 fine.

Note that in every one of these cases, no actual crime was every committed. The money was earned legally. The only issue was the manner in which the individuals deposited the money. The IRS didn’t like it.

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Unions discover Obamacare sucks

5:45 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Because of required Obamacare regulations and taxes on their union health plans, the unions representing workers at 29 west coast commercial ports are now threatening to strike and shut the ports down.

Obamacare imposes a 40 percent tax on health benefits deemed too generous by the government. Health benefits exceeding $10,200 a year in value for individuals or $27,500 for families are defined as “Cadillac” plans and are subject to the tax. Health benefits for longshoremen exceed $40,000 per employee, meaning the union would be served an enormous tax bill when the penalty is imposed in 2018. The longshoremen’s contract expired in July, 2014 and contract talks have stalled, in large part, over whether workers or employers will pay the new Obamacare tax.

But hey, these unions voted for and continue to support the Democratic Party without question, even as the Democratic Party continues to block any repeal or changes to Obamacare. To these union leaders, it all must be Bush’s fault!

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The sideshow of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress

12:01 pm

The report notes the increasing flood of Democrats who say they will boycott Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress next month. It also makes this cogent point:

In a sane world, as soon as Netanyahu expressed an interest in speaking, Boehner and McConnell could have responded to both the Prime Minister and our President and said it was a fine idea, set up a time and moved forward. If Obama didn’t want this to be a mess and conceivably even find a way to turn it into an advantage, he could have extended an offer to meet privately with Bibi before the speech or even show up at it with him. That would have presented a unified front between two allies for the rest of the world and the whole thing could have been a done deal by now. There’s nothing remarkable about a world leader making a speech in Washington. It’s pretty much what the place exists for.

While the House Republicans have worked this event for their own political advantages, their invitation to Netanyahu did no harm to American interests or our ally. Obama and the Democrats however have done everything they can to push back politically, even though their push back apparently threatens our ally while damaging our interests in the Middle East.

To put it another way, ask yourself whose actions are doing real harm to the diplomatic relations between the United States and Israel? Who is rejecting an ally and refusing to talk or listen to him?

Update: Check out this very pointed column noting the different reactions of the President and the Democrats to two identical invitations from Congress: “A Jew and a Catholic were invited to Congress…”

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Obama administration stonewalls IRS investigation

11:50 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The Obama administration has denied an entire freedom of information request from the web news outlet The Hill in connection with the IRS scandal and the administration’s harassment of its political opponents.

The Hill asked for 2013 emails and other correspondence between the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The request specifically sought emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner and Treasury officials, including Secretary Jack Lew, while the inspector general was working on its explosive May 2013 report that the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to review the political activities of tax-exempt groups.

TIGTA opted not to release any of the 512 documents covered by the request, citing various exemptions in the law. The Hill recently appealed the FOIA decision, but TIGTA denied the appeal. TIGTA also declined to comment for this article.

This denial is essentially another example of the Obama administration defying the law, as they really don’t have any right to refuse to release these documents. The Freedom of Information law was expressly written to force government agencies to release documents in these kinds of circumstances, not hold them back.

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Staples cuts hours to avoid Obamacare

12:52 am

Finding out what’s in it: Staples has implemented a strict policy that requires its workers to work less than 25 hours per week or be fired in order to avoid Obamacare.

The company claims this policy has been in place for years, but I suspect this is not quite true. What is true is that Obamacare has significantly crippled American industry by imposing such oppressive costs and regulations on growing businesses that businesses have been forced to stop growing in order to survive.

But don’t worry. Just days ago the Democrats in Congress stood firm and once again voted in unison in favor of keeping Obamacare the law of the land. No repeals of any kind if they have they way!

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Ratings plunge for network news shows

3:40 pm

All three networks have lost significant viewers since it was revealed that NBC’s lead anchor, Brian Williams, routinely embellished or lied in describing past events in his life.

Not surprisingly NBC has lost the most. However, the reason all three networks have been hit can best be illustrated by this quote at the link by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough:

I’m just hopeful, because I can’t be objective here, I’m hopeful that when all of the madness that’s going on, investigations that need to be going on, when the fury dies down and when we get through the storm and the decision is made to judge what Brian Williams’ future should be, that that decision will be based on the entirety of his career and not on one or two or three mistakes.

Scarborough reveals that he is willing to excuse lying by a news anchor. To him, finding out that Williams was a liar is “madness.” He also reveals that, in his television new community, such behavior should be excused, and that it isn’t that unusual and should in fact be tolerated.

As I’ve said many times before, if you depend on the media for your news information you are not only uninformed, you are misinformed. The entire Brian Williams story only provides further evidence of this.

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What happens if Homeland Security shuts down?

6:03 pm

Not much it appears.

Salmon and a few other conservatives are the only ones saying it publicly so far, but the reality is that a department shutdown would have a very limited impact on national security. That’s because most department employees fall into exempted categories of workers who stay on the job in a shutdown because they perform work considered necessary to protect human life and property. Even in a shutdown, most workers across agencies, including the Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Customs and Border Protection, would continue to report to work. Airport security checkpoints would remain staffed, the Secret Service would continue to protect the president and other dignitaries, the Coast Guard would stay on patrol, immigration agents would still be on the job.

Indeed, of the agency’s approximately 230,000 employees, some 200,000 of them would keep working even if Congress fails to fund their agency. It’s a reality that was on display during the 16-day government-wide shutdown in the fall of 2013, when national parks and monuments closed but essential government functions kept running, albeit sometimes on reduced staff.

In other words, the cries of disaster, mostly from Democrats and from a few in the wimpy Republican leadership, are the same bull we heard prior to sequestration and the previous government shutdown. From a political point of view, the Republicans have nothing to lose politically by letting this agency run out of funds, and everything to gain.

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IRS re-hires employees it fired for being tax cheats

12:55 pm

According the IRS inspector general, the IRS has re-hired hundreds of employees that it had previously fired for misconduct, including many whose misconduct included cheating on their federal taxes.

But don’t worry, the IRS will be fair and non-political when it targets political groups. It will easily be able to resist pressure from politicians who demand the tax agency destroy their opponents. How could it not when it is clearly such an upstanding honest government agency?

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“It is ironic a sign warning of the liberal thought police was potentially stolen by the liberal thought police.”

1:45 am

Leftwing facists: A sign advertising a talk being given by Jonah Goldberg about his book Liberal Fascism at the University of Michigan was apparently stolen by liberal fascists who don’t like freedom of speech.

The sign was bright red and declared: “Warning: Liberal thought police. Jonah Goldberg on his best-selling book Liberal Fascism.” It included a picture of a smiley face with a piece of tape over its mouth and the word “censorship.” “The biggest irony is on the front of the poster it says ‘thought police,’” Audia said in an interview with The College Fix. “So a warning on thought police was censored. It’s pretty ridiculous.”

Now of course, we really don’t know exactly who stole the sign, but somehow I don’t believe it was tea party protesters offended by Goldberg’s subject matter. Moreover, such actions have become the typical behavior leftwing students and administrators on college campus.

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“Oh, she’s going down.”

10:05 am

Rand Paul today became the fourth senator to announce his opposition to Loretta Lynch, Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general.

Earlier Wednesday, in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, Breitbart News watched as the senator’s legal and press team briefed him final time before the interview. Sergio Gor, Paul’s communications director, his press secretary Eleanor May and attorney Brian Darling were all present.

Paul asked the team about Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) question during Lynch’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing about whether she’d oppose using a drone to kill an American citizen on American soil.

When Paul heard about her non-answer—she wouldn’t commit that the federal government does not have such authority—he was incredulous. Furthermore, Paul was appalled that Lynch came out in favor of President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty and the use of asset forfeiture—where the federal government seizes people’s property sometimes with flimsy reasoning, something even the Obama administration has offered slight opposition to—and then told his office staff he’s going to oppose her and aim to derail her nomination chances. “Oh, she’s going down,” Paul said to the room.

The video of Lynch’s non-answer to Cruz’s question is quite shocking. I dare you to watch it and tell me afterward that this administration and Democratic Party is not a threat to your freedom and rights.

Whether the Republicans in the Senate will have the courage to stand up to this threat, however, remains a very big unknown. That four senators have announced their opposition so early is a good sign, but we shall see.

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Obama: all religions the same

9:49 am

At his speech today at the National Prayer Breakfast President Obama outlined the moral equivalency between Islam and all other religions, noting that all religions have in the past been “hijacked” by evil people for “for their own murderous ends.”

This is an interesting intellectual argument that is completely meaningless in today’s world. The problem today is not Christian murderers or Jewish murderers or Buddhist murderers. It is Islamic murderers, supported by an Islamic population willing to condone violence in the name of their religion.

You don’t believe me? Then compare the large number of demonstrations in the Islamic world protesting the publication of cartoon drawings of Mohammed by Charlie Hebdo versus the complete lack of outrage in those same places for the burning alive of one prisoner and the beheading of others by the Islamic State. Even if Obama is right, which I do not believe, Islam today is murderous and running amok. We must deal with that reality, not the ivory tower delusions of college professors and incompetent Presidents living in the past.

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The government as thief

4:43 pm

How civil forfeiture is used by government agencies to steal cash and property from innocent Americans.

More here, including this juicy story:

To the casual observer it appears that Virginia is run by violent psychopaths. That’s the takeaway from the recent report of an anti-poker SWAT team raid in Fairfax County, in which eight assault rifle-sporting police officers moved against ten card-playing civilians. The police possibly seized more than $200,000 from the game, of which 40 percent they eventually kept.

There was no indication that any of the players was armed. As a matter of fact, it appears that a gambler is more likely to be shot without provocation by the Fairfax Police than the other way around. The heavy firepower at the Fairfax raid was apparently motivated by the fact that “at times, illegal weapons are present” at such poker games, and that “Asian gangs” have allegedly targeted such events in the past. This is, then, a novel approach to law enforcement: as a matter of policy, Fairfax police now attempt to rob and steal from people before street gangs get around to doing it.

As the article notes, gambling is not against the law in Virginia, merely regulated. It appears that this regulation was used as a very flimsy excuse by the Virginia state government to rob these citizens and pocket the cash.

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Obamacare website allows commercial companies access to personal data

10:12 am

Finding out what’s in it: The Obamacare website allows the personal data of users to be gathered by commercial advertising companies like Google, Twitter, and Yahoo.

I should add that this is only a minor invasion of privacy. Much worse is the federal government’s insistence that your actual medical record, required on Obamacare to be digitized, shall be made available to scientists for research purposes, without asking your permission.

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