Tag: oppression

“Medical science doesn’t support official rhetoric on ebola.”

9:43 pm

The essay is long, but incredibly detailed, worth reading, and illustrates nicely how little politicians and bureaucrats understand the uncertainty of science and knowledge. Their focus is power and control, and thus they often will say anything that they think will help them maintain that power and control, even if it is an outright lie or misstatement.

In the case of ebola, the misstatements and lies have been frequent, bald-faced, and have done nothing to help these politicians and bureaucrats maintain power and control. If anything, their willingness to say things that were simply not true or not yet known has served to undermine their effectiveness while fueling the public’s increasing distrust and disbelief in anything they say.

That Barack Obama is lying or overstating his flawed knowledge on this subject does not surprise me. That some scientists at the CDC are doing so is a much greater concern.

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EPA threatens $75K per day fines to man who built pond on his own property.

6:11 pm

We’re here to help you: The EPA is threatening a man with $75K per day fines unless he tears down a homemade pond he built on his private property, using water from a 2-foot wide, 6-inch stream.

Johnson’s pond was created with a dam on a nearby creek in Fort Bridger, which he built about five years ago. He got the right permits from Wyoming state agencies. “I acquired a stock pond reservoir permit,” he said. “They said go ahead and build it. When I was done with the project, I got a hold of them again and did a final on it, and they sent me a paper back saying I’m in good standing, that my pond was exactly exercised as permitted.”

The EPA maintains Johnson broke a law by failing to obtain a federal permit before constructing the pond.

As Johnson himself notes, this is really a power grab by the EPA. The agency has wanted control over every piece of U.S. water for decades — no matter how small or temporary. In the late 80s they tried to claim that any temporary wet spot was a wetlands that they had jurisdiction over. Now, it is every minor creek. In both cases, the EPA never made any effort to document if any environmental harm was being done, only that they should have complete control over everything.

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CDC deletes ebola info from website

10:12 am

Incompetence: One day after posting information that said ebola could be spread by a sneeze, the Centers for Disease Control has deleted that information from its webpage.

It could be the deleted webpage was wrong, which raises the question: Why had they posted it in the first place? Or it could be that the deleted webpage was right, which raises the question: Why did they delete it?

Or it could be that they haven’t the slightest idea what they are doing, which raises the question: Why do so many Americans still want to put their trust, and their lives, at the mercy of these government hacks?

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Controversy surrounding IXV flight cancellation

9:24 am

Italian officials are suggesting politics or incompetence for the sudden cancellation Wednesday of the November test flight of Europe’s IXV experimental spaceplane.

ESA and CNES officials up to now have either declined to comment or, in the case of ESA, said they were at a loss to explain why a program whose mission profile has not changed in several years is now suddenly stalled for [range] safety issues that in principle should have been aired and resolved long ago.

One official, saying he could not believe that the two agencies simply forgot to evaluate the safety issues, said he preferred to suspect political motives. “Look, we are about to send a spacecraft and lander to Mars, in one year,” this official said. “Europe has rendezvoused with a comet a decade after the [Rosetta comet-chaser] satellite was launched. You want me to believe that somehow the agencies just forgot to evaluate safety? That is too far-fetched. I would rather believe there is some political motive.”

The claim is that no one ever evaluated the range issues in sending the Vega rocket to the east instead of its normal polar orbit trajectory. The Italian officials are suggesting that either the officials who cancelled the mission are incompetent, or that their competition with France within ESA over launch vehicles (Ariane 6 vs Vega) prompted the cancellation.

Europe’s lead launch-vehicle nation is France, which initially balked at participating in the Vega program. A French minister said that in Europe, launch vehicles are French. The French government declined to allow the export, to Italy, of the avionics suite that guides Vega, forcing Italy to develop its own. Italy has since done so and successfully flown it on Vega. As it stands now, one official said, France must accept the idea that with Vega, Italy has led development of a vehicle that at least in principle resembles an intercontinental ballistic missile. “Some people don’t like that,” this official said.

Either way, this cancellation combined with the difficult and extended disagreements within ESA over replacing Ariane 5 suggest that the future of this European partnership is becoming increasingly shaky.

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Two Republican senators propose limiting ability of government to confiscate property

11:30 am

Theft by government: Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) are both proposing limits to the federal government’s ability to confiscate private property.

Since these confiscations are essentially unconstitutional and illegal, “limiting” the government’s ability here to me seems to be a weak response. These confiscations should cease entirely, now. Still, at least these Republicans are making sounds they want to do something about this fascist behavior.

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Massive voter fraud in Maryland

9:55 am

An election watchdog group has uncovered evidence of massive voter fraud in Maryland, including evidence large numbers of non-citizens voting as well as more than 40,000 individuals registered to vote in both Virginia and Maryland.

The group, Virginia Voters Alliance, says that it compared how voters in Frederick County filled out jury duty statements compared with their voting records. The group’s investigation found that thousands of people in Frederick County who stated that they are not U.S. citizens on jury duty forms went on to cast votes in elections. Either they failed to tell the truth when they were summoned for jury duty, or they cast illegal votes. Both are crimes. The same group previously found that about 40,000 people are registered to vote in both Virginia and Maryland.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, numerous officials and campaign workers, almost all supporters of Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, have been caught on tape eagerly encouraging an illegal immigrant to vote illegally. I’ve posted the video below the fold.
» Read more

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TSA confiscates a toy ray-gun belt buckle

9:40 pm

Does this make you feel safer? At an airport security checkpoint the TSA confiscated a belt buckle made to look like a toy Flash Gordon ray-gun.

It wasn’t a real gun. It wasn’t even a toy gun. It was a belt buckle fashioned to look like a 1940s science fiction ray-gun. Even if it was one of the actual Flash Gordon ray-guns that was used in the movie serial, it couldn’t have done anything.

But it wasn’t. It was a belt buckle.

I am so glad we have the TSA looking out for us!

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Cheap alternatives to Obamacare on the rise

4:24 pm

Finding out what’s in it: The purchase of short-term health plans outside of Obamacare is sky-rocketing as citizens scramble to avoid the law’s high costs.

A fast-growing, short-term alternative to ObamaCare that allows customers to get cheap, one-year policies could put the government-subsidized plan into a death spiral. The plans, the only ones allowed for sale outside of ObamaCare exchanges, generally cost less than half of what similar ObamaCare policies cost, and are increasing in popularity as uninsured Americans learn they are required to get health coverage. The catch — that the policies only last for a year — is not much of a deterrent, given that customers can always sign up for ObamaCare if their short-term coverage is not renewed.

“Applications rose 30 percent compared to last year,” eHealthInsurance.com Enrollment Specialist Carrie McLean told FoxNews.com. Other providers said they also see rapid growth in the plans, which have a typical monthly premium of just over $100, compared to traditional plans that cost an average of $271.

The irony here is that when Obamacare caused the cancellation of hundreds of thousands if not millions of health plans that people liked, wanted, and could afford, Obama and the Democrats claimed that those plans were cheap and bad plans that those people shouldn’t have liked or purchased in the first place. The Democrats knew better, and because they cared, they passed Obamacare to force everyone off those plans. Now, because Obamacare plans are so expensive many simply can’t afford them, people are buying these short-term health plans, which are exactly like the kind of garbage health plans that the Democrats claimed Obamacare had eliminated.

Thank you Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. Your wisdom knows no bounds!

Note also that when government creates a situation where needed products or goods are no longer affordable, some form of black market in those products or goods is going to appear, no matter what. This is an example of that.

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Video of election machine voter fraud?

11:21 am

Video has finally become available showing a voting machine picking a Democrat when a voter presses the touchscreen for a Republican.

Having been an election judge in Maryland, up until now I have been generally skeptical of this story that has been making the rounds in the past week. It is notoriously easy to accidently press the wrong button on a touchscreen, so hearing that people pressed Republican and got Democrat did not impress me. The story could easily be an example of Republican partisans trying to drum up outrage against Democrats, something I abhor, from either party. I wanted to see actual video.

Well, we’ve got some video now, which I’ve posted below the fold. As the article notes,

The YouTube footage is the first visual report of the alleged problem with the voting machines. The error appears to occur when the voter’s finger is slightly off center in the Republican box, which appears below the Democrat box. It is apparently still possible to vote for the Republican candidate, and it is possible for a vigilant voter to correct the mistake and vote again, but a voter in a hurry might easily register a mistaken vote for the Democrat by mistake and fail to notice. The problem seems to recur throughout the ticket of races. (No test involving a voter trying to choose the Democratic candidate and selecting the Republican instead is shown.)

The footage is still not conclusive, as there are many ways the action could be made to appear worse than it really is, and there is no real proof that this video is of an actual voting machine, in a voting booth.

If true, however, it suggests real voter fraud, as there is no way the machine could have accidently been programmed to misread a finger touch like this. Someone would have had to intentionally calibrated the machine to do this.

» Read more

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Houston mayor withdrews sermon subpoenas

10:22 am

A partial victory for free speech: The lesbian mayor of Houston has withdrawn the subpoenas her administration had issued demanding that conservative pastors turn over to the government any sermons or communications which had discussed politics.

I call this a partial victory because the mayor, Annise Parker, is still in office, and was still unapologetic about the subpoenas.

“The goal of the subpoenas is to defend against the lawsuit and not to provoke a public debate,” Parker said. She is ordering the subpoenas removed for the sake of Houston, not because the request were in any way illegal or intended to intrude on religious liberties, Parker said. “I didn’t do this to satisfy them,” Parker said of critics. “I did it because it was not serving Houston.”

She still thinks it was perfectly okay to make this demand against her opponents. Such a person should never be allowed the power of any political office, including dog-catcher.

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Doctors flee Obamacare

6:40 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Because of low reimbursements, complex paperwork and regulations, and requirement that doctors treat patients even if they don’t pay for treatment, almost a quarter of a million doctors have opted out of Obamacare.

Remember, it was the Democratic Party and Barack Obama that gave us Obamacare, and only them. They got no help from anyone else, and actually were not interested in anyone else’s advice. They knew better, and the result has been this disaster. Remember this on election day.

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