Tag: oppression

Making hard choices

2:27 pm

A new poll shows that the congressional special election to replace Anthony Weiner in the traditionally Democratic district in Queens/Brooklyn, New York is surprisingly competitive.

The poll found [Democrat] Weprin, a state assemblyman, leading [Republican] Turner, a retired broadcasting executive, 48 percent to 42 percent in the race for the Democratic-friendly Queens and Brooklyn-area seat.

Two thoughts: First, this poll fits with another that shows for the first time a majority of adults don’t want their own Congressman reelected. If so, it shouldn’t be surprising that the Democrat appears so weak in Brooklyn/Queens, a place I lived for most of my life and a place I found to be so knee-jerk Democrat that you couldn’t admit to being Republican without risking being blacklisted from all things.

Second, despite the mess the federal government is in as well as the disgraceful scandal that caused the previously elected Democratic Congressman to resign, it is also not surprising that 48 percent of the population still wants to vote Democrat in this district. This is my biggest fear: the continuing unwillingness of too many Americans to honestly face our government’s budget problems.
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2012 is gonna be nasty

9:33 am

2012 is gonna be nasty.

There’s no doubt that we’re in for a high level of personal nastiness and invective. This election is not going to be about some minor adjustment to spending, or some trifling adjustment of tax rates, or some nibbling at the edges of the regulatory state. What is at stake in the 2012 election is the continuation of a world-view; a political philosophy that sees ever-larger government as the cure to whatever ails us. This next election is the first big battle for the survival of that worldview as the majority view of the political class, or the survival of the insurgent TEA party idea that government has become to large, too intrusive, and too expensive, so therefore must be radically reduced. There is little room to compromise between these two visions of government. Indeed, in most ways, they are worldviews that are mutually exclusive. Over the next decade or so, we are going to learn which of these two views will prevail, and if the US, as presently composed, will remain a united polity.

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Kansas becomes the second state to return a large federal grant awarded to them by Obamacare.

9:24 am

Kansas becomes the second state to return a large federal grant awarded to them by Obamacare.

‘Every state should be preparing for fewer federal resources, not more,’ Governor Brownback said in a statement. ‘To deal with that reality, Kansas needs to maintain maximum flexibility. That requires freeing Kansas from the strings attached to the Early Innovator Grant.’

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Restaurants Brace for Job-Killing Obamacare Regulations

7:43 pm

Repeal it: Chain restaurants struggle with Obamacare regulations requiring all menus to include calorie information.

Under the new rules, if [a chain] wanted to introduce a new item, such as a crab cake pizza, [they’d] have to replace the signs in all of [their] stores, sucking time and money that could otherwise be used to build [the] business.

And:

“So what it comes down to is this: The federal government has passed a law requiring us to build new signs, or buy new menu boards, and to put on those signs and menu boards information which we already provide, even though it is unlikely to change eating habits, at a cost of over a million dollars we will divert from and be unable to spend on jobs,” cautioned Puzder.

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TSA Confiscates Pregnant Woman’s Insulin, Ice Packs

11:00 am

Don’t you feel safer now? The TSA screener in Denver decided a pregnant woman’s insulin and ice packs were a threat and confiscated them.

She asked 7NEWS not to use her name for fear of retaliation for speaking out. “I got a bottle of nail polish. I got hair spray bottles. I got needles that are syringes. But yet I can’t take through my actual insulin?” she asked. [emphasis mine]

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Five insurers cancel their healthcare coverage in Indiana due to Obamacare regulations

9:33 am

Repeal it: Five insurers have announced they are canceling their healthcare coverage in Indiana due to Obamacare regulations. The reason?

Aetna was leaving the Indiana individual market over a rule in the federal health care overhaul that insurers essentially must dedicate 80 percent of the premiums they collect to medical care. Anything less than 80 percent would be paid as rebates to policyholders the following year.

In other words, Obamacare tries to legislate the percentage of overhead a company spends, something that in the real world is simply impractical. Under this kind of regulation, every private company will eventually go out of business, leaving us stuck with a nationalized healthcare system run by our government.

And we all can see how efficiently the government runs things, right? Imagine a visit to the doctors’ office being like going to the motor vehicle administration.

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Tea Partiers like “terrorists.”

6:09 pm

Leftwing civility: Joe Biden accused the tea party Republicans today of “acting like terrorists” in the negotiations over the debt limit.

And why? Because they simply refused to back down to those who want to spend us into oblivion.

Then there’s this quote from Mike Doyle (D-Pennsylvania): “We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Impossible to spend any money? What kind of fantasy world does this idiot live in? The federal budget has doubled in the past ten years. Meanwhile, this debt ceiling bill does nothing to reduce the size of government. On the contrary, the so-called reductions in the deficit merely slow the growth of government. Under the agreed plan, in each of the next ten years the federal government’s budget will still grow, and it will do so at a rate far exceeding inflation in an dying economy choked by regulation and government interference.

How is it even possible to deal with this problem if you have to deal with people like this, who are so divorced from reality and consider anyone who disagrees with them the worst sort of monster? Sadly, it is impossible. Until we see a wholesale change in government, with most of these idiots thrown from office, we will see no change in how our government is operated.

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10 years after concealed weapons law, the fearful claims of opponents turn out false

1:27 pm

Ten years after the passage of concealed carry laws, the fearful claims of opponents are proven false.

During the debate, opponents of the change warned of gun-toting, trigger-happy citizens loose on the streets. But violent crimes have been rare among carrying a concealed weapon license holders. Only 2% of license holders have been sanctioned for any kind of misbehavior, State Police records show.

Not that the facts matter to these anti-gun advocates:

Still, anti-gun activists say changing the law was a grave mistake. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Web site describes state reforms like the one enacted in Michigan as “a recipe for disaster.”

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One in eight small businesses have stopped providing health insurance since Obamacare was passed

8:44 am

Finding out what’s in it: One in eight small businesses have stopped providing health insurance since Obamacare was passed.

One of the great “promises” of [Obamacare’s] supporters was that insured people would be able to keep their current health insurance plan. As a practical matter that has not been true for a substantial number of small employers and their employees. Since enactment, one in eight (12%) small employers have either had their health insurance plans terminated or been told that their plan would not be available in the future.

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Texas Lawmaker Calls for Probe Into Ban of Prayers at Military Funerals

10:52 pm

A Texas lawmaker claims he went undercover and witnessed officials at a veterans cemetery try to prevent the use of the word “God” as well as a Christian prayer at a military funeral.

Culberson [the lawmaker] said the commander of the honor guard was told by cemetery officials to approach a grieving widow to reconfirm that she wanted the word God mentioned at her husband’s graveside service. “He quite correctly said as a Texan and a man of honor and integrity, ‘I’m not bothering that poor woman at this most terrible time of her life. We’re going to do the ritual,’” Culberson said. “Right in front of me, the VA directly and deliberately attempted to prevent the VFW from doing their magnificent, spiritual ritual over the grave of this fallen hero.”

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Conservatives bridle at trillions in ‘phony’ cuts

9:13 am

Trillions in “phony” cuts?

The devil is in the details,” says a Republican strategist closely involved in the debt fight. “When you’re talking about $1 trillion [over ten years], you’re talking about $100 billion a year, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be evenly distributed among the years.” Does that mean it might be loaded mostly at the end of the decade, when it might not even happen? “That’s where you get into the details,” the strategist says.

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An Obamacare provision appears to force middle-class families to either buy unaffordable healthcare or pay a penalty

10:37 pm

Repeal it! An Obamacare provision appears to force middle-class families to either buy unaffordable healthcare or pay the penalty for going without.

I wrote “appears to force” above because the issue at hand is so complex I don’t think anyone either in or out of the Obama administration truly understands it, another indication that the healthcare law is a disaster that needs to be ceremoniously dumped, and as quickly as possible.

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The sun, climate change, and censorship

10:14 pm

The chief of CERN has prohibited its scientists from drawing any conclusions from a major experiment that appears to prove that solar activity and the resulting ebb and flow of cosmic rays has a direct effect on the climate.

Two points:

First, the results described provide strong evidence that the sun is a much more important component in climate change than any climate model has previously predicted. These results could help explain the Little Ice Age, which took place around 1700 at exactly the same time the sun became very quiet and stopped producing sunspots for decades. They could explain the Medieval Warm Period around 1000 AD, when cosmic ray activity declined (which also suggests the sun become more active) and the earth apparently warmed. And they might very well even explain the recent cooling during the past decade, which also took place during a period of solar inactivity and a comparable increase in cosmic ray activity.
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All charges dropped on woman who groped a TSA agent

9:07 pm

All felony charges dropped against the woman who groped a TSA agent.

Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the Maricopa County attorney’s office, said county prosecutors concluded the facts of the case don’t rise to the level of a felony. The case against Yukari Miyamae, of Longmont, Colo., now goes to Phoenix’s city prosecutor’s office, which handles all misdemeanors in the city. That office said it hasn’t received the case and hasn’t decided whether to charge Miyamae.

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The U.S. and the rising Russian space program

12:48 pm

The Russians yesterday successfully launched their first space telescope since the fall of the Soviet Union. Here is a Google translation of a Russian article describing Spektr-R’s research goals:

[Spektr-R is] designed to study galaxies and quasars in the radio, the study of black holes and neutron stars in the Milky Way, as well as the regions immediately adjacent to the massive black holes. In addition, using the observatory, scientists expect to receive information about pulsars and the interstellar plasma. It is planned that the “Spektr-R” will work in orbit for at least 5 years.

Though this particular space telescope is probably not going to rewrite the science of astrophysics, its launch is historically significant. It indicates that Russia has just about recovered from the seventy-plus years of bankrupt communist rule that ended in 1990.
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