Tag: oppression

New EPA ozone regulations based on fantasy

4:46 pm

We’re here to help you: New proposed EPA regulations for reducing ozone are expected to cost trillions to enforce, even though there is no evidence that the regulations will do anything to improve health.

In the name of fighting asthma, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested permission to decrease the ozone standard  — the amount of ozone allowed in the atmosphere — to a level some scientists say is physically impossible to achieve. One organization estimates the cost to implement these new rules will be $1.1 trillion. Even worse, data shows that as ozone levels in the U.S. have decreased, asthma cases have increased.

This regulation may be the most expensive in history, and bring absolutely no health benefits.

Worse, there is absolutely no scientific basis for these ozone regulations.

While average levels of ozone have decreased 33 percent since 1980, the number of asthma patients has increased over that time. The Global Asthma Report for 2014 lists environmental factors which lead to asthma, but never mentions smog or ozone. The National Institutes of Health does not list climate change or ozone as a cause of asthma mainly because the exact causes are unknown. Excessive hygiene once was considered the primary cause, but this view has been mostly refuted. “The World Health Organization report “Ambient (Outdoor) Air Quality and Health” does make the argument that ozone may trigger asthma, but it does not refute the negative correlation between improving air quality and the worsening Asthma epidemic in the US.”

While proposing the new standard, the EPA cited a study of which the agency itself had previously said “it is convenient for fitting the model, but it is not accurate.” As Tony Cox pointed out, “there is abundant historical data on ozone levels and asthma levels in U.S. cities and counties over the past 20 years,” so it is relatively easy to see if decreasing ozone has positive effects on respiratory health. It does not.

Read the whole thing. The only reason the EPA is going to try to impose this regulation, which by the way is so stringent that it will likely be impossible for anyone to meet it, is because they can. It is a power play, pure and simple, imposed by appointed fascist bureaucrats who have an ideology that they intend to force on everyone else, regardless of the harm it does.

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Boeing’s first stealth plane concept

10:57 am

Boeing has just released the few remaining photos and documents relating to a 1960s stealth plane concept, including pictures of a half-scale prototype.

The concept dates back to the early 1960s, with a one-half scale model of the aircraft being built sometime between 1962 and 1963. The aircraft was an exercise in utilizing specific materials and shapes to drastically reduce the radar cross-section of a tactical aircraft. From this pioneering design, five Boeing “stealth” patents were awarded, and they only appear to have shown up in public records in the early 1990s, decades after they were officially filed. 

The model of Quiet Bird was said to have been tested at Boeing’s Wichita facility in 1962-1963, all of which occurred on a radar range. No actual flight testing of Quiet Bird itself was said to have happened, though. But the tests were highly successful: they proved that it was possible to drastically decrease the radar signature of a tactical aircraft.

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Obamacare causes health insurance deductibles to skyrocket

2:48 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Health insurance deductibles have gone up seven times faster than the rate of inflation since Obamacare became law.

According to a new report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, the increase brings the average deductible that workers must pay for their health insurance plans to $1,077; more than triple what it was a decade ago. As reported in the L.A. Times, “That is seven times faster than wages have risen in the same period.”

Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman said, “It’s a quiet revolution. When deductibles are rising seven times faster than wages … it means that people can’t pay their rent. … They can’t buy their gas. They can’t eat.” As a comparison, “workers’ wages increased 1.9% between April 2014 and April 2015, according to federal data analyzed by the report’s authors.” The news is also bad for family plans as, the “average family plan cost workers $4,955, up 3% from last year.”.

Obviously this is the fault of the Republicans campaigning for president. Their opposition to Obama and the Democrats is certainly the reason why Obamacare continues to be such a unmitigated disaster for Americans.

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GAO criticizes the staff and budget request of FAA’s commercial space office

11:12 pm

A GAO report has concluded that the FAA has not provided sufficient justification for its 2016 requested budget and staff increases for its Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST).

AST requested an additional $1.5 million more plus an increase of its staff by 13 to handle what it expects to be an increase in commercial launches. However,

The GAO report cautioned about using predictions of launches as a reason for hiring additional staff because, in recent years, “the actual number of launches during those years was much lower than what FAA projected.” In one example, the FAA projected it would license more than 40 launches and reentries in 2014, but the actual number was about 20.

The report also revealed a split among companies in the commercial launch business about the importance of increasing AST’s budget. While industry organizations like the Commercial Spaceflight Federation have expressed their support for the proposed budget increase, only three of the nine companies surveyed by the GAO believed the office has insufficient resources to deal with its workload. Three other companies thought the office has sufficient resources, and the remaining three expressed no opinion. The report did not identify which companies held those opinions, but did list the nine companies contacted by the GAO: Blue Origin, Boeing, Masten Space Systems, Orbital ATK, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Virgin Galactic, Vulcan Aerospace and XCOR Aerospace.

The second paragraph in the quote above suggests that a majority of the private companies that AST would regulate are not enthused about giving that government agency more resources or abilities. To me, I suspect that the phrase “We’re here to help you!” and what it usually signifies about the government has something to do with that lack of enthusiasm.

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Researchers push for access to confidential government records of the public

11:51 am

What could possibly go wrong? Researchers in a number of fields want access to the vast amount of private government data that is routinely gathered from the public.

In the past few years, administrative data have been used to investigate issues ranging from the side effects of vaccines2 to the lasting impact of a child’s neighbourhood on his or her ability to earn and prosper as an adult3. Proponents say that these rich information sources could greatly improve how governments measure the effectiveness of social programmes such as providing stipends to help families move to more resource-rich neighbourhoods.

But there is also concern that the rush to use these data could pose new threats to citizens’ privacy. “The types of protections that we’re used to thinking about have been based on the twin pillars of anonymity and informed consent, and neither of those hold in this new world,” says Julia Lane, an economist at New York University. In 2013, for instance, researchers showed that they could uncover the identities of supposedly anonymous participants in a genetic study simply by cross-referencing their data with publicly available genealogical information.

Read it all. It is terrifying to me how governments worldwide increasingly consider this private data their property to use as they wish. For example:

In the United States, the Census Bureau has been expanding its network of Research Data Centers, which currently includes 19 sites around the country at which researchers with the appropriate permissions can access confidential data from the bureau itself, as well as from other agencies. “We’re trying to explore all the available ways that we can expand access to these rich data sets,” says Ron Jarmin, the bureau’s assistant director for research and methodology.

I ask: What business is it of the Census Bureau to do this? The information they gather was originally intended solely to determine Congressional districts. Moreover, who gave them the right to release the confidential data to anyone? Have they asked anyone for this permission?

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Iran nuclear deal allows Iran to increase funding to terrorists

8:22 am

Surprise, surprise: The Iran nuclear deal has allowed Iran to immediately send more cash to the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah.

Since the deal was signed, Iran has significantly increased its financial support for two of the largest terror groups in the region that have become political players, Hamas and Hezbollah. In the years before the deal was signed, the crippling sanctions limited this support, which had significantly diminished along with Iran’s economy. But Tehran’s belief that tens, or hundreds, of billions of dollars will flow into the country in the coming years as a result of sanctions relief has led to a decision to boost the cash flow to these terror organizations.

This support, for example, has enabled Hezbollah to obtain highly developed new armaments, including advanced technologies that many militaries around the world would envy. Al-Rai, a Kuwaiti newspaper, reported Saturday that Hezbollah has received all the advanced weaponry that Syria has obtained from the Russians. The report cited a security source involved in the fighting in Zabadani, on the Syria-Lebanon border, where Hezbollah is fighting the al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State, and other groups. It is evidently the growing Iranian financial support that is enabling the Lebanese Shiite militia to purchase advanced weapons, including ones that were hitherto outside of its reach.

There is more. Read it all. As Ted Cruz had correctly noted, Obama’s Iran deal would make his administration the world’s biggest financial supporter of terrorism. This article proves that statement 100% correct.

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More data tampering at NOAA

3:18 pm

The uncertainty of science: An analysis of the 2015 climate data released by NOAA suggests that they continue to adjust the data on a yearly basis to cool the past and warm the present so as to create the false illusion of global warming,.

More here. There is no justification for these adjustments. None. Worse, the NOAA scientists don’t even bother to try to explain the changes, even the changes to past data from 2014 to 2015.

The most damning aspect is that the adjustments only shift things in one direction — increasing the illusion that the climate is warming. This strongly suggests that these changes are political and not scientific, and that there is fraud and corruption at NOAA.

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Why I am not impressed with Fiorina’s impressive words

9:11 am

During Wednesday’s Republican debate Carly Fiorina made a very strong and powerful condemnation of Planned Parenthood, based on what she described was contained in the very ugly undercover videos of that organization and its officials. You can watch her full statement here, but the key lines are these:

As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.

Not surprisingly, there has been a kerfuffle on the web between the left and the right on whether Fiorina was accurately describing what was on the videos. Many liberal news sites have noted, quite accurately, that none of those videos show exactly what Fiorina describes, while this story tries to fact check both her words and the liberal challenges to her, concluding that in essence the tapes did show something akin to what Fiorina described, but not exactly.

This debate however misses the point. Yes, Fiorina was getting the essense right. The videos do show a despicable organization whose officials are quite willing to harvest the body parts of newly born babies for profit. But this is not what I found significant about Fiorina’s statement.

When I watched this clip from the debate, my first thought was that it clearly demonstrated that Fiorina herself had not personally watched the tapes. In one breath she challenges Obama and Clinton to watch them, while in the very next breath she describes something that isn’t actually on the tapes, as she describes it, demonstrating that she has formed her opinions of these videos from hearsay or from a very superficial quick scan of them. While I agree with her about Planned Parenthood and what these videos prove about that organization, I found her statement very revealing. It told me that her knowledge on this subject is superficial with her opinions formed from hearsay evidence.

I found myself at that moment very unimpressed with Fiorina as a candidate. She might have the right principles, but her willingness to base her opinions on incomplete information and then demand that others agree with her I found very disappointing. The candidate the Republicans choose has got to be someone who is rock solid, with no sloppiness about his or her approach to the facts. With this one soundbite, however, Fiorina demonstrated to me that she is not rock solid, and can be sloppy. This is not a candidate I want running for President.

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Global warming advocates call for the prosecution of scientists who disagree with them

11:31 pm

Fascists: Twenty global warming scientists have written a public letter to President Obama demanding he prosecute those who challenge their claim that humans are causing the climate to warm.

We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress. One additional tool – recently proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.

The very fact that these global warming scientists find it necessary to demand their opponents be prosecuted proves that their claims are invalid. If they had the facts on their side, there would be no need for them to call for the government to prosecute and possibly imprison those who disagree with them. They could simply cite the facts, using a willing press to spread the news, and the opposition of this small minority of skeptics would make little difference. The public would pay the skeptics no mind.

The public however is not stupid and has been following this story with great interest. They might not be convinced that the skeptics are right, but the public is also very doubtful about the claims of the global warming advocates. Instead, the public is aware that the science of the climate is very uncertain, and that more facts are required before they will be convinced about anything.

What this letter does prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that many important members of the global warming community are downright fascists, and do not believe in freedom and the first amendment.

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Audit finds Obama administration complicent in the Obamacare website fraud and cost overruns

10:17 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A federal audit has found that the Obama administration looked the other way, and in some cases even helped, while the contractors hired to create the Obamacare website committed significant fraud and negligence.

The investigation focused on nearly two dozen contracts considered to be most important to the operation of the website, which was supposed to create a marketplace that serves as a one-stop shop for health insurance. Instead, it’s had a multitude of problems that have been well-documented in the media. The deals to develop this federal insurance marketplace went mostly to eight politically connected companies that raked in north of $600 million, the IG’s report says. “As of March 31, 2014, CMS had identified 62 contracts that it had awarded to 35 different contractors to develop, implement, and operate the Federal marketplace,” the report states.

That means there are a lot of taxpayer dollars floating around for this cause. You’d think the government would select its finest employees to oversee the deals. Instead, CMS violated federal rules by assigning unqualified employees to oversee contracts worth more than $10 million, according to the audit. In one case an unqualified agency employee, who didn’t even have lower-level certification to supervise contracts over $25,000, oversaw a $130 million deal for more than a year. In a separate case documented by the IG, an unauthorized CMS worker allowed an eye-popping $28 million cost overrun that wasn’t even identified until the agency finally assigned a more knowledgeable staffer to take over the deal.

These atrocious examples are probably not the half of it because CMS couldn’t even provide investigators with routine documents that should have been readily available. That means there’s no telling the true magnitude of the damage. As for accountability, there appears to be none as is often the case in government. The Obama officials—former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and former CMS head Marilyn Tavenner—in charge of this boondoggle are both gone and it’s highly unlikely either will face any consequences.

Hey, what’s a little graft and embezzlement of tax dollars among friends? Besides, they are Democrats, and we always forgive Democrats for their corrupt practices. More important, it is never their fault. Bush and Reagan and that evil right wing conspiracy is obviously to blame.

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Saudia Arabia condemns 17-year-old to crucification for protesting government

11:58 am

The religion of peace: Saudia Arabia has condemned a 17-year-old boy to death by crucification for participating in anti-government protests.

Ali was initially held at a juvenile offenders facility, where he was denied access to lawyers. Evidence indicates that he was tortured and forced to sign a document which was tantamount to a confession. The signed document formed the basis of the case against him and he was convicted of the alleged offences by the Specialised Criminal Court (SCC). However, the trials failed to meet international standards. Ali and his family have strongly denied the charges against him, but, after the final appeal – which was held in secret and without Ali’s knowledge – was dismissed, there are few legal options remaining to oppose the sentence originally handed down on 27 May 2014. It is feared that Ali could be executed in a matter of days.

The case against Ali appears to be based on his familial connection to Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a 53-year old critic of the Saudi regime and a prominent religious leader in the Kingdom, who is his uncle. Mr Al Nimr was sentenced to death by crucifixion on charges including ‘insulting the King’ and delivering religious sermons that ‘disrupt national unity’. This week, it emerged that the authorities plan to execute Ali’s uncle on Thursday (17 September) sparking fears that his nephew will also be killed.

The article also notes that these arrests are not unique and are instead part of a larger crack-down in Saudia Arabia on any dissent, no matter how mild. It also illustrates the savagery and barbarism of Islam and the countries in the Middle East that practice it. Any civilized person with any sense of justice should be outraged by it.

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Students win lawsuit against university speech restrictions

9:46 am

Victory for free speech: Students at Dixie State University in Utah have won their lawsuit against the university’s attempt to outlaw their freedom of speech.

Students whose flyers were censored by Dixie State University in St. George, Utah, won their First Amendment lawsuit Thursday—on Constitution Day—when a settlement was reached restoring students’ rights to free speech. Three students filed the lawsuit after their flyers, with unflattering depictions of President Obama, former President George W. Bush, and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, were banned by the university. Dixie State claimed no flyers that “mock” or “disparage” individuals were allowed.

As part of Thursday’s settlement, Dixie State agreed to revise campus policies to meet First Amendment standards. These include the university’s unconstitutional flyer approval process, posting policies, club event policies, and “free speech zone” policy. The university also must pay $50,000 in damages and attorney’s fees and provide training to administrators on the campus’ new speech policies. [Emphasis mine]

The broad speech rules set by the university were so vague that they literally could ban any speech they didn’t like, which they then did. This is the typical behavior of a fascist. I am also sure that they would be offended by my characterization of them as fascists, and would try to shut me up for doing so. Also the behavior of a fascist.

Read it all. The story demonstrates again that if people are willing to stand up against this leftwing state religion, they can win.

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Worker fired because lesbian was bothered by his Christianity.

9:06 am

Fascists: A factory worker in Ohio has lost his job merely because he talked about his Christian faith with a lesbian and she complained to management.

Rouston had spent the past 13 years as a material handler for Middletown, Ohio-based Precision Strip, and he was well known for sharing his Christian faith with everyone at the company. So it was not unusual that he did so in the form of a message to a new employee, who happened to be lesbian. Rouston and this particular colleague got into a discussion – outside work hours over Facebook – about whether Christians hate homosexuals, and in an attempt to demonstrate that Christians do not hate homosexuals, Rouston – who lives in nearby Monroe, Ohio – recommended that she see the film Audacity, which was actually produced for the purpose of addressing that very issue.

And that’s where Rouston’s trouble started, leading all the way up to his termination for making her “uncomfortable”: Routson was told that he was terminated not because of his faith, but for making his co-workers “uncomfortable.”

In other words, he was told by his boss that, because this was what the lesbian wanted, he was forbidden when not at work from discussing his religion with anyone. When he didn’t obey this absurd demand, he was fired. Do you think the company would have fired the lesbian if she had started advocating homosexual politics off work and a Christian complained? Not a chance.

Once again, we need to note that at no point did anyone prevent the homosexual person from practicing their lifestyle. All the Christian wanted was the freedom to express his opinion, as guaranteed by the first amendment. In today’s American, controlled by the leftwing state religion, such freedom unfortunately no longer exists.

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Ted Cruz, Sitting Pretty

10:11 pm

Link here. The author makes a strong case for Cruz’s smart strategic positioning during the campaign, as I have. Right now, should the other outsiders Trump or Carson or Fiorina falter, Cruz is in exactly the right place to pick up their supporters. Moreover, unlike the others he has been very carefully building support within the organizational base of the Republican Party, which has been as disgusted with its leadership as the voters have been.

A lot can happen in the next year, but I must say that I continue to be impressed with Cruz’s campaign work.

I say this not as a partisan Republican advocate. I do not trust any of these politicians, including Cruz. They want power, which makes me always suspicious of everything they do. However, I as a voter have to try to pick the best candidate who can also win the election. Cruz’s politics since his election in 2012 have been right on the money, while his smart strategy in the campaign speaks well for him as a candidate.

Best of all, imagine him debating Hillary Clinton in the main election. His calm but intelligent thoughtful debating style will eat her alive!

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Students defy school restrictions on free speech

3:48 pm

Defiance: Students in two high schools in Virginia and Texas this week pushed back against school officials who punished them for wearing flag emblems the school disapproved of, specifically the American and Confederate flags.

In the case of the American flag, the student was threatened with suspension because he was wearing a shirt with the flag on it and the school insists shirts must be solid. When he and his family questioned the suspension, the school backed off.

In the case of the Confederate flag, it appears the students had organized a protest against the school’s ban of that symbol.

“This is nothing about racism. This is about where we come from, what our ancestors did and what everybody here’s family has fought for, the right to do what we want,” Christiansburg High senior Andrew Love said.

Rules at Christiansburg High School and three other county schools do not allow students to display the Confederate flag because it’s considered offensive. Last month students were told to remove Confederate flag bumper stickers from their cars.

The issue here has nothing to do with racism. It has to do with free speech. The school has no business telling anyone what they can say or cannot say, even if that statement is contained in their clothes. That the school had the nerve to demand that the students remove bumper stickers on their cars is beyond outrageous and illustrates that this has nothing to do with maintaining discipline in the school The administrators want to stamp out opinions they disagree with.

Kudos to the students for fighting back. We need more courage like this.

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The Tiny Dot

1:37 pm

A daytime pause: Apropos of last night’s Republican debate, this very funny short video I think explains the absurd situation in which the American people find themselves, and asks the right questions that might actually force people to do something about it.

The video ends with a plug of a book by the videographer, which might be great. I think the solution is for more Americans to actually read some history, including the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and even Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. To call these documents rightwing extremism is not an exaggeration, but by following them for 200 years the U.S. became the wealthest nation ever in the history of the human race, all because it put its faith in ordinary people instead of the elite powers that want to dictate terms to everyone else.

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EPA violated Endangered Species Act in Colorado

1:18 pm

The law is for the little people: The EPA violated the Endangered Species Act when it began work on the Animas River spill without first consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Turns out that it is very illegal, as in, criminal and civil charges illegal, when someone does not consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service prior to undertaking a project that poses a threat to endangered critters. In this case, downstream fish.

But, but, but, we didn’t mean to spill all of that acid and lead and whatnot into the river, stammered EPA Chief Gina McCarthy.

That didn’t satisfy GOP Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, and reminded her repeatedly that the EPA had been warned for more than a year that a blowout was imminent, and therefore consultation on endangered species was required by law before work began at the mine. [emphasis in original]

It turns out that the EPA did not begin the process, required by law, until last night, more than a month after the spill and well after their work began. I wonder how they would treat a private landowner or business who so cavalierly ignored the law.

Also, the head of the Interior Department, Sally Jewell, refused to appear for Congressional hearings, while the EPA head, Gina McCarthy, demanded that she not have to sit next to other witnesses, all of whom were there to describe the disaster her agency has brought down upon them. Moreover, during McCarthy’s testimony she said that no one at the EPA would be held criminally responsible for the spill.

But hey, isn’t the government’s the best way to do things? That’s what Democrats keep telling us. And we believe them, of course, blindly, without question.

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New census data confirms more Obamacare failure

3:07 pm

Finding out what’s not in it: New census data has now confirmed that Obamacare has consistently failed to enroll the predicted numbers of the uninsured.

The population-wide uninsured rate fell from 14.5% in calendar year 2013 to 11.7% in 2014. The total number of uninsured dropped from 45.2 million in 2013 to 36.7 million in 2014–a net of 8.5 million who gained coverage.

While some, including President Obama, have bragged about these numbers, when we compare them with the predictions we find that Obamacare is significantly failing to insure the numbers it promised. Leftwing think tanks had generally predicted numbers 50% to 100% higher. The Obama administration however was even more optimistic.

For example, around the time Congress passed the bill, the Medicare actuary (at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS) had predicted that the number of uninsured would decline by 23.8 million just in its first year! The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had been somewhat more cautious, but nevertheless expected Obamacare to reduce the number of uninsured by 19 million in 2014 alone.

What these facts teach us is that the utopian dreams of ideologues rarely come close to reality. Often, they not only fall short, they often worsen the situation, which in the case of Obamacare is certainly true. Though more people now have health insurance, that coverage is generally far more expensive and covers far less than plans did prior to the law.

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Road crews remove stone altar built by TMT protesters on Mauna Kea

8:52 am

According to state officials, a crew needing access to materials for grading the roads on Mauna Kea removed last week one of three stone altars built by the protesters to the Thirty Meter Telescope.

The altar known as an ahu (AH’-hoo) was built June 24, the day hundreds of protesters prevented construction crews from reaching the telescope site on Mauna Kea (mow-NAH’ kay-AH’). “About a hundred people or so contributed to this ahu I would guess,” Lakea Trask, one of the protester leaders, said Tuesday in describing how stones were passed person-to-person to erect the 4-foot-high structure at an elevation of 11,000 feet. “Basically, it’s a religious altar or shrine. It’s not just a stack of rocks. It’s the focus of the energies of our pule — our prayers — our spiritual connection to the land,” Trask said. “It’s like a hate crime to us.”

The group of people who have been camping regularly on the mountain to prevent crews from returning hadn’t checked on the ahu for a while, Trask said. Every second Sunday or so, some of them visit the altar to give offerings, usually water or bundles of leaves from the Hawaiian ti plant, he said. On Sunday, “when they went up there to check on it, there was no ahu,” Trask said. “And in its place there was a bulldozer.”

Forgive me if I express extreme skepticism about the religious nature of these stone structures. If they are so significant, why were none built before the protests? And why, before the protests, did we hear so little of people going up to the top of Mauna Kea to pray? When I was there in 2003, I saw zero evidence of religious pilgrims or sites. The mountaintop was then open to visitation by all, and the only people I saw visiting it were astronomers, telescope engineers, road crews, amateur astronomers, and tourists.

These structures are purely political, built to put a wedge between the mountain and the astronomers. I am certain that the instant these protesters get their way, shutting down TMT and possibly gaining some financial reward from the state, these so-called Sunday prayer visits will stop.

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Obamacare more severely punishes hospitals serving the poor

4:03 pm

Finding out what’s in it: An Obamacare provision to Medicare is instead penalizing hospitals that care for poorer and sicker patients.

The provision penalizes hospitals that have a high readmission rate. What it doesn’t consider is that some hospitals focus on poorer and sicker patients, who also have a higher readmission rate. Obamacare then punishes them for doing so.

But remember! The Democrats and Obama care! What matter if the policies and laws they pass cause harm to the most helpless citizens. What really matters is that we vote for Democrats over and over and over again, no matter how many times they prove to us that their ideas are incredibly foolish.

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Cursing the police and the law is legal

3:10 pm

Victory for free speech: A federal judge has ruled that a man’s first amendment rights were violated when he was arrested because he wrote profanity-laced objections on his speeding ticket payment letter.

This what these fascists in the small town of Liberty, New York did:

On May 4, 2012, Barboza, then 22, was driving through the small, scenic town of Liberty when he was given a speeding ticket. Clearly sore about the incident, Barboza crossed out “Liberty” on the payment form and replaced it with “Tyranny.” He then scrawled the offending phrase across the top, pleaded guilty to speeding and put the form in the mail.

Justice Brian P. Rourke informed Barboza in September of that year that his payment had been rejected and he’d have to make the two-hour trek from Connecticut to appear in court. There, Rourke lectured Barboza over his use of foul language, before prosecutors from the Sullivan County district attorney’s office instructed police officers to arrest Barboza on a charge of aggravated harassment. Barboza was taken to the Liberty police station, where he was booked, fingerprinted and handcuffed to a bench. After being shuffled between courts, he was eventually released when he paid a $200 bail.

The new ruling makes the DA liable for damages. The town of Liberty will also have to “stand trial for failing to train police officers regarding the First Amendment,”

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The slow disappearance of college English departments

8:53 am

Decline and fall: A new report just released has carefully outlined the steady and continuous shrinkage in college English literature requirements as well as the departments that teach this literature in the past thirty years.

The report outlines examples where colleges have either consolidated their English Departments into other departments or shrunk them significantly. In addition, the report outlined how schools have increasingly reduced the requirements for reading classic English literature, often replacing this with politicized courses pushing a left wing agenda since partisan leftists now dominate the academic community.

Schalin noted how English departments have become increasingly politicized and how “the political left rules the English discipline.” Specifically, Schalin he discovered “…of the 261 tenured or tenure-track professors identified by the Pope Center as literature teachers in the UNC system, only 10 are registered Republicans, while 196 are Democrats and 55 are “unaffiliated.” In percentages, that is 75 percent Democratic, 4 percent Republican, and 21 percent unaffiliated. This contrasts greatly with North Carolina’s general population, which in 2012, according to registrations, was 43 percent Democratic, 31 percent Republican, and 26 percent unaffiliated.” One professor, North Carolina A&T’s Harold Meyerson, openly said he has written “peer-reviewed Marxist analyses of post structuralism, critical race theory, and the current economic/energy/environmental crisis.”

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Doctor fired for daring to disagree with homosexual agenda

8:49 pm

Fascists: A Boston doctor has been expelled from the staff of the hospital because he expressed opinions disagreeing with the homosexual lifestyle while noting the negative health effects of that lifestyle.

Recently, Dr. Church was expelled from the staff of BIDMC after he posted  medical concerns about the dangerous practices of homosexual behavior, also two Bible verses, on the hospital’s internal Internet portal. The hospital did not dispute the truth of Dr. Church’s statements, nor claim that he ever discussed these matters with patients. But they stated that his concerns constitute “discrimination,” “harassment,” and “unprofessional conduct” and may not be discussed.

I normally do not object when private organizations or businesses fire someone, even if I believe that firing to be wrong. What strikes me about this expulsion is the political agenda behind it. The doctor was fired because he dared disagree when the hospital became an aggressive advocate for the homosexual lifestyle and political agenda. He didn’t take his disagreement to patients, and in fact continued to treat homosexual patients without bias. All he was doing was expressing his disagreement of the hospital’s advocacy within the private hospital communications network. Be sure and read the timeline of this story, which outlines what happened in great detail, going back to 2011. It even describes the double standard of the hospital, telling him to shut up because he was offending homosexuals but continuing to send him pro-gay email flyers even though he asked to be removed from the emailing list because those flyers offended him.

This story thus illustrates starkly the lengths in which the liberal, leftwing community, not just homosexuals, will go to stifle any opposing opinions. It shows again that the freedom to speak your mind in modern America is very much threatened, because it isn’t a small minority that believes freedom of speech should be squelched, but a very significant percentage, possibly a majority.

Here’s another example, in California. This fascist attitude aimed at shutting down any speech that the left disagrees with is growing and becoming downright dangerous.

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The day we forgot

11:28 am

On this anniversary of 9/11, one reporter notes how much we have forgotten about that day, and what it demanded we do afterward.

Fourteen years later, it is astonishing the degree to which these and other lessons of that day have been forgotten, rendered moot, or cast aside.

Shocking as it seems, America didn’t learn much at all from 9/11. It was not a particular moment of cultural or political change in American society. No generally held assumptions were overturned. No historical watershed was reached. It yielded no great art or literature. The monuments to the dead are for the most part defeatist, not expressions of resolve. What was baked into America’s future on the 10th of September, 2001 was still there on the 12th of September, 2001. The nation did not change.

I disagree with him strongly on one point. The nation did change, but for the worse. Instead of aggressively committing ourselves, all of us, to an effort to eliminate the evil in the Middle East that allowed 9/11 and many other horrible violent attacks to occur, we instead attacked ourselves, limiting our freedom by allowing the government to pry into our private communications, perform offensive strip-searches of us at airports, and impose restrictive security measures on our lives.

The result is that 14 years later, our political leadership now bows down and surrenders to Iran, agreeing to give them billions while allowing them the ability to develop nuclear weapons. This leadership is so terrified that any opposition to Islam might cause offense, they are thus willing to crap on the dead bodies of Americans who were killed by these vile fanatics.

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CDC expands investigation into military handling of dangerous disease samples

10:46 am

Does this make you feel safer? The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has now expanded its investigation of the Defense Department’s handling of dangerous infectious disease samples.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expanding its investigation into possible mishandling and improper shipment by Defense Department laboratories of organisms that cause deadly diseases, including plague and encephalitis, U.S. officials said Thursday. Concerns about the handling of those samples led the Army to announce a moratorium on production, shipping and handling of toxins at nine labs last week. But officials did not acknowledge until Thursday that plague and encephalitis samples were involved.

When asked why the Pentagon didn’t disclose the new concerns about plague and encephalitis last week, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said that officials were trying to be as forthcoming as possible “without alarming the public.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, the Defense Department withheld critical information because it made them look bad and illustrated how dangerous their mishandling of dangeous diseases has been.

Other than that, all is well!

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Mitch McConnell makes a fool of himself

9:57 am

The leader of Republican failure, Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), today had the nerve to say that Congress’s inability to block Obama’s Iran deal was still a victory because they “won the argument with the American people.”

He really does think Americans are stupid. Under the leadership of McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Congress two months ago wrote and passed the Corker-Cardin bill to allow the Iran deal to be passed with only a one-third minority approval from both houses of Congress, instead of the constitutionally required two-thirds majority in the Senate. In other words, this corrupt Republican leadership stacked the deck in favor of Obama and the deal in order to make it easy to pass.

He now has the chutzpah to call this a victory because the debate about the bill caused the American people to oppose it!? The American people always opposed this deal, or any deal that would funnel billions of dollars to this terrorist regime and allow them to build nuclear weapons. What he and Boehner needed to do was to oppose this deal unequivocally, using the power the constitution gave them to block it. Instead, they manipulated the vote to get it passed, and then make believe they opposed it all along.

And McConnell said this on September 11th of all days!

These guys have got to go. They do not represent the Republican Party, or the conservative movement. Instead, they are quislings and fifth columnists, working to sabotage the will of the American public, which voted overwhelmingly for Republicans and a conservative agenda in the last election.

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Southern ocean absorbs more CO2 than expected

9:38 am

The uncertainty of science: Scientists have found that the ability of the southern ocean surrounding Antarctica to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide varies much more drastically than they had predicted.

In 2011, the ocean took in 4.4 gigatonnes of CO2, according to the study — more than 10% of the CO2 emitted by human activity at the time. That was roughly double what it absorbed a decade earlier. The increase marks a sharp turnaround from simulations published a few years ago, which suggested that the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2 had dropped in the 1980s and 1990s, and predicted that this trend would continue.

“It doesn’t mean that our [climate-change] projections for the future are going to change dramatically,” says Nicolas Gruber, an environmental physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who co-authored the latest paper. Rather, he says, the study shows that the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon changes more drastically than researchers had anticipated. [emphasis mine]

Typical of much of the climate research community, the scientist above insists that just because their models were wrong is no reason to change them, or the reasoning behind them. We are going to charge ahead, regardless of the facts!

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Police arrest 8 protesters camping illegally on Mauna Kea

8:54 am

Last night police arrested 8 protesters who were camping illegally on Mauna Kea in opposition to the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.

I have posted below the fold a video of the arrests. To me, the significant take-away from this video is the scale and permanence of the tent structures that these people have built opposite the Mauna Kea visitors center. The emergency order forbidding camping had gone into effect on July 14. Yet, the impressive buildings they have made of wood and poles have clearly been allowed to stand. This suggests that the state is really not serious about enforcing the law and stopping the protesters from camping on the mountain.

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School lunch program collapsing under Obama

7:32 am

Doing the job the Republicans in Congress are too cowardly to do: The more costly and less appealing foods imposed by the Obama administration on the school lunch program in order to promote better eating have been rejected by so many students that the entire program faces bankruptcy

President and first lady Michelle Obama’s bid to cut kid obesity through new demands for more costly but healthier food is financially crushing the nation’s school cafeterias, forcing staff cuts, boosting waste and killing plans to buy new equipment, according to an industry association.

A new survey from the School Nutrition Association reported that 70 percent of the nation’s lunch programs have been financially “harmed” by the new low-salt, low-sugar menus and that a stunning 93 percent report fewer students buying the chow. “Meeting these mandates has harmed the financial health of nearly 70 percent of school meal programs surveyed, with fewer than 3 percent reporting a financial benefit,” said the survey. Some 49 percent of the responding schools said they were forced to cut cafeteria staff as a result.

Not surprisingly, the school cafeteria industry is calling for greater funding to solve the problem. I’d rather see the entire program revamped and trimmed significantly. There is no reason for the government to provide lunches for most of the nation’s children. The program was originally created to feed only the poorest. As with most government programs, it has since grown way beyond that original goal, to a point that is absurd and wasteful.

Posted in the Tucson airport.

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VA fiddled while sick veterans died

10:56 am

Obamacare will soon make this kind of medical care standard for everyone! A new audit of the Veterans Administration estimates that 307K patients died while waiting for requested treatment.

Read the entire article. The malfeasance and corruption at the VA is far worse than this, and goes back decades to the agency’s very beginnings. Also, giving the VA more money won’t fix it.

[T]he VA has seen its budget grow from $87.6B in 2009 to $152.7B in 2014. The 2016 budget request is $165.5B. This includes $70.2B in discretionary spending, with $63B going to medical care. So the department is asking for plenty of money to “help” veterans, but isn’t spending the money wisely.

Most of the issues mentioned in this audit were first identified in report issued in 2010. So why didn’t the VA act then to attack these problems?

Things move slowly in government, but if the work process system was this bad, why wasn’t it fixed? A part of it might be the VA wasn’t interested in fixing the system because it didn’t want to lose any money. This is a horrible theory, but it isn’t like the VA hasn’t had issues for years.

The time has come to shut these failed government agencies down.

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