Tag: policy

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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NASA delays first Orion manned flight two more years

4:02 pm

Surprise, surprise! NASA today announced that the first manned flight of the Orion capsule will likely be delayed two more years to 2023.

Orion has been under development since 2006, and is expected to have cost more than $17 billion when that first mission flies in 2023. SLS, once called Constellation but with a different configuration, has been under development since 2011, and has cost about that much through today. All told, I would estimate that by the time that flight occurs in 2023 (assuming it doesn’t get delayed again) NASA will have spent more than $40 billion.

This is a joke, but a very painful one. It is going to take NASA almost two decades to get one capsule off the ground. Compare that with the 1960s space race, where we went from nothing to landing on the Moon in a little more than eleven years.

If NASA had been spending this money on planetary missions, they might actually have been doing something worthwhile with it. Meanwhile, the private companies, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Orbital ATK, are building capsules and rockets that are as capable, if not more so, and are getting them built now for less than a quarter that price, in the range of about $6 to $8 billion.

If our elected officials in Congress had any brains, they would shut Orion/SLS down now, and save the taxpayers an awful lot of money.

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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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Aerojet Rocketdyne lobbies its rocket engines to Congress and ULA

8:39 am

The competition heats up: Officials at Aerojet Rocketdyne yesterday lobbied hard for Congress and ULA to finance and buy their new AR-1 engine, designed to replace the Russian engines used in the Atlas 5 rocket.

More here, including the threat by those officials that the development of the engine could slip past 2019 if Congress doesn’t give the company more money.

The first comment at the bottom of the page of the first article above I think possibly outlines some of the reasons behind Aerojet Rocketdyne’s bid to buy ULA.

The development of the Blue Origin BE-4 is underway, and a launch vehicle like the proposed Vulcan would certainly be an asset to national security and commercial space development. But, as was stated, such a LNG/LO2 vehicle would need a different infrastructure to support it. ULA’s Atlas V is the most mature and reliable [launch vehicle] we have. The problem with it is a political one, because of its using the Russian RD-180 engine. From what has been published, plugging the BE-4 into an Atlas V is a non-starter; the BE-4 is meant for the Vulcan…if ULA can obtain funding on something more than a per-quarter schedule! Aerojet-Rocketdyne’s AR-1 would be a more logical choice to replace the RD-180, BUT…ULA won’t release the Interface Control Documents (ICD’s) to Aerojet-Rocketdyne. Hence, AR’s attempt to buy ULA.

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More rumors swirl about replacing Boehner as House Speaker

4:09 pm

Link here. The story discusses in detail some of the negotiations that appear to be going in the background within the Republican caucus, all focused on the possibility that Speaker John Boehner could be driven out sometime this fall. It also indicates that the more conservative wing of the Republican Party is pushing the issue, and no matter what happens, is likely to have greater influence in the coming months.

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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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Two more arrests for embezzlement at Vostochny

5:02 pm

The Russians today arrested two more individuals for the embezzlement of funds during the construction work at the new spaceport in Vostochny.

The Lyublino district court of Moscow has ruled to take into custody director of the VIP Stroi Engineering company Vadim Mitryakov and former head of the Nizhny Novgorod Volga-Vyatka construction company (VVSK) Yevgenia Degtyareva, suspected of embezzling 300 million rubles ($4.42 million) allocated for the construction of roads to the Vostochny cosmodrome, the court said on Monday. “The court granted the investigation’s request on the measure of restraint for Mitryakov and Degtyareva — arrest for 2 months, i.e. until November 7,” the court’s press service told TASS.

This puts five now under arrest in the case.

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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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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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Iran deal gets enough Democratic votes to pass

10:22 am

Democrats now have enough votes to sustain a veto and thus allow President Obama’s Iran deal to go into effect.

Ed Morrissey says it best:

What’d the GOP get out of all this? What did their huge advantage in the House and their eight-seat majority in the Senate ultimately amount to in terms of concessions? It’s one thing to lose a momentous fight on foreign policy, ceding all of your constitutional leverage in the process, but if you can get some goodies for your side at least you can say it’s not a total loss. Unless I missed something, we got … nothing. Not a thing — not even, in all likelihood, the right to crow and say that our resolution of disapproval passed the Senate with plenty of Democratic support. This fiasco will end with an essentially party-line vote on cloture, leaving Obama free to argue to the world that the deal has the acquiescence of the U.S. Congress. The only thing we get from this is the right to point out later, when this agreement eventually ends with Iran going nuclear and the Middle East being further destabilized, that this disaster is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Democratic Party. That’s a nice consolation prize, but we’ve known since the beginning that we’d be getting that. What we’ve added to our “winnings” since this congressional kabuki began is precisely nothing.

The reason the Republicans failed here is that the leadership, led by Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), wrote and passed a bill that allowed this treaty to pass without even a majority of Congress. In other words, before they even saw the treaty they agreed to it. And once they saw the treaty they made loud noises, including Corker, about how bad it was, but they themselves had already made it impossible for them to block it.

It is time for these Republican leaders to be fired. It isn’t just Democrats who have betrayed the American people and our friends in the Middle East with this deal, it is this Republican leadership that has decided to help Obama and the Democrats get everything they want. And in turn, this has given the Iranians — still eager to instigate terrorism attacks and war against the U.S. and Israel — everything they want as well.

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170 million guns purchased, crime drops by half

10:10 am

More guns, less crime: According to federal government data Americans have purchased more than 170 million guns since 1991, and in that time violent crime has dropped 51 percent.

This evidence strongly suggests that the presence of guns in the hands of honest Americans helps to reduce violence. And while there are many factors contributing to the fall in crime, many which have nothing to do with the purchase of guns by Americans, the statistics here should not be ignored. Gun control advocates always argue that if gun limits are reduced, a blood-bath will follow. This claim has always been proven false, and these statistics do so again.

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Manned Soyuz heads for ISS with new crew

9:38 am

A new crew was successfully launched into orbit last night by a Russian Soyuz rocket.

This is the mission that Sarah Brightman was originally going to fly on as a tourist — before she backed out or was rejected by the Russians as a unqualified. Instead, it carries one Russian who is going to take over as commander of the station for a long term mission, and two short term astronauts, from Kazakhstan and Denmark, who will remain in orbit for only about 10 days.

They are taking the long, two-day rendezvous route to ISS, so they won’t actually dock until Friday.

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Government still hasn’t notified individuals whose personal data was hacked

10:15 pm

Government marches on! Months after the federal government admitted publicly that the personal data of more than 20 million government employees had been hacked they still have not sent notifications to those millions.

Instead, they’ve turned this into an opportunity to spend taxpayer money for their friends!

The agency whose data was hacked, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), said the Defense Department will begin “later this month” to notify employees and contractors across the government that their personal information was accessed by hackers. OPM said notifications would continue over several weeks and “will be sent directly to impacted individuals.”

OPM also announced that it hired a contractor to help protect the identities and credit ratings of employees whose data was hacked. In a statement, OPM said it had awarded a contract initially worth more than $133 million to a company called Identity Theft Guard Solutions LLC, doing business as ID experts, for identity theft protections for the 21.5 million victims of the security data breach. The contractor will provide credit and identity monitoring services for three years, as well as identity theft insurance, to affected individuals and dependent children aged under 18, the agency said.

I wonder if Theft Guard Solutions donated campaign money to Obama in order to get the contract. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I also wonder if they are as incompetent at this work as the company the Obama administration hired to build the Obamacare website. I also don’t know this, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if they screw up just as badly.

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Kentucky clerk again defies Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriages

10:07 am

A Kentucky county clerk continues to defy federal court rulings by refusing to issue any marriage licenses so as to avoid issuing same-sex licenses as well.

A Kentucky county clerk, defying a new U.S. Supreme Court decision and citing “God’s authority,” rejected requests for marriage licenses from same-sex couples on Tuesday in a deepening legal standoff now two months old. Citing her religious objections, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has refused to issue any marriage licenses since the Supreme Court in June ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry under the U.S. Constitution.

On Monday the same court rejected Davis’ request for an emergency order allowing her to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples while she appeals a federal judge’s order requiring her to issue them. Eight people filed a federal lawsuit against Davis in July challenging her office’s policy of not issuing marriage licenses to any couples – gay or straight.

I do not support any government official who arbitrarily decides to not follow the law. The issue here is whether the Supreme Court ruling itself followed the law. There are many legal experts who would say no.

Either way, this story illustrates the coming persecution of Christians and Jews whose faith tells them that any support of homosexual activities is wrong. You see, it is no longer acceptable to the homosexual community for these religious people to simply leave homosexuals alone and allow them to do what they want, as has been the case for the past half century. It is now demanded that the religious participate and endorse homosexual behavior, even if it goes against their own deeply held beliefs.

I want to point out again that no homosexuals have been prevented from living their lifestyle during this whole same-sex brouhaha. They remain free to live as they wish. The only people being persecuted are Christians, merely because they have refused to endorse that behavior. With these facts in mind, who do you think are the fascists?

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What it was like practicing Islam for the first Malaysian in space

8:57 am

This article, describing the 2007 flight of the first Malaysian in space, launched as a passenger in a Russian Soyuz capsule, is mostly worth reading because it goes into details on the Islamic religious rules the astronaut had to follow to practice the religion in space.

Muszaphar had to spend time going through an instruction manual on daily religious rituals provided by Malaysian mullahs. Vyacheslav Urlyapov of the Moscow-based Centre for Southeast Asia, Australia, and Oceania Studies, RAS Institute of Oriental Studies, sums up the cosmonaut’s experience: “The 11-day flight overlapped in part the holy month of Ramadan. Muslims had been in orbit before him, but it fell to Muszaphar to comply with the detailed instructions written for him by Islamic theologians (ulema) to remain a true believer in space, too.”

Muslims are required to face in the general direction of the city of Mecca while saying the mandatory – five times a day – prayers. But locating the tiny city from space is not an easy task, especially when you are hurtling around Earth at more than 17,000 km per hour. Also, in space there is no sense of direction – as we know it on land. The Malaysian cosmonaut was therefore all at sea during his first space flight.

Mercifully, Muszaphar was released from fasting, and was allowed to say shorter prayers and perform daily rituals according to Kazakhstan time. Plus, he didn’t have to face the constant ordeal of locating Mecca.

Kind of describes the problems when a medieval religion is thrust into the 21st century. The medieval religion has to change.

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Anti-establishment non-politicians top Iowa poll

9:11 am

I normally don’t bother reporting on polls. They are notoriously unreliable and often force one to the wrong conclusions. Nonetheless, this poll appears significant because it indicates that it isn’t just Trump that the voters are turning to in their disgust of the establishment political elite community.

First, it is the first poll since late July that does not show Trump with a lead. Instead, Ben Carson ties him. Second, Carly Fiorina with 10% and Ted Cruz with 9% come in second and third.

Finally, and most important, Bush, Kasich, and Rubio, politicians who have demonstrated by their actions that once elected they cannot be trusted get little or no support.

For months I have strongly believed that Jeb Bush was going to go nowhere once the voting began. The Republican base does not want another Bush. Similarly, Rubio’s betrayal of the tea party voters who got him elected by his support of the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration bill is well remembered by those tea party voters. They do not trust him.

Instead, I believe that it will be reliable conservatives or brash outsides like Cruz, Fiorina, Carson, and Trump who will get the votes. This poll suggests I might be right.

Having said this, I must emphasize again my mistrust of polls. It is just as likely this poll is a waste, and tells us nothing.

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Obamacare to punish small businesses for helping employees

8:42 am

Finding out what’s in it: The IRS has announced that the annual fine to businesses — even businesses with less than 50 employees — for helping employees pay their medical expenses will be a mere $36,500.

“We were told over and over during the Obamacare discussions that if you had less than 50 employees there’s no requirement to provide coverage, so you don’t have to worry about any cost factor,” said Ron Aldridge, Mississippi director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses. … If a company has five employees, the total tax would be $182,500. A “large” employer with 50 employees that did not provide insurance in compliance with the Affordable Care Act, would be subject to $2,000 per employee, with the first 30 employees exempt, for a total of $40,000, Aldridge said.

And then there’s this gem:

The Mississippi Insurance Department said: “The rule appears nowhere in the Affordable Care Act but was developed by the Obama administration’s regulation writers at the IRS.” [emphasis mine]

Not only is this IRS rule illegal, as it isn’t based on anything written in the Obamacare law, it starkly illustrates the inhumane attitude of the Obama administration and people there who wrote it. The rule demands that employers look the other way if their employees are in trouble because of medical expenses. It also surprises everyone by suddenly imposing Obamacare on all businesses, even tiny ones which had been promised they were exempt from the law.

In fact, based on the information in this article, even an independent contractor like myself could be found in violation of this rule and subject to fines.. Essentially, I am not allowed to use my profits from my business to pay for my medical costs,

In other words, this administration wants to hurt people.

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Judge rules IRS must disclose White House requests for private taxpayer information

1:13 pm

The noose tightens: A federal judge today ruled that the IRS must turn over any records showing White House requests for private confidential taxpayer information.

Questions about potential White House meddling in taxpayers’ private information stretch back to the beginning of the Obama administration, when the then-White House chief economist seemed to describe the tax structure of Koch Industries during a briefing with reporters. His description was apparently incorrect, but it left some watchdog groups wondering if the White House had quietly sought information on conservatives, such as the billionaire Koch brothers.

Cause of Action sued in 2013 to get a look at whatever requests the White House, or other federal agencies, had made. The IRS refused, saying even the existence of those requests would be protected by confidentiality laws and couldn’t be released, so there was no reason to make the search. The judge said Friday, however, that the agency couldn’t use the privacy protection “to shield the very misconduct it was enacted to prohibit.”

If evidence is found that the White House was delving into the confidential tax records of its opponents, with IRS help, I think this scandal will finally reach critical mass. People might not go to jail, but the evidence will allow the individuals involved to sue and win in court. For the Democrats, Obama, and the IRS, this will not be pretty.

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New EU tax law puts thousands out of business

11:42 am

We’re here to help you! A major revision to the VAT tax in the European Union tax has caused the shutdown of thousands of businesses because they cannot afford to meet the complex rules and bureaucracy required.

Designed to prevent large businesses locating themselves in VAT-competitive territories, it had the predictable effect of drowning small businesses under a sea of bureaucracy, forcing them to access the data required to prove the customer’s location, figure out which of more than 80 VAT rates to apply, and issue an invoice in the correct language, currency and layout. Unable to afford the costly software required to deal with the regulation, thousands of small business and sole traders have closed or abandoned their enterprises. Most of those who have continued to trade have either moved to third party platforms, losing up to 70 percent of their total revenue (not just non-domestic sales) in commission, or spent thousands on software.

“The human cost to these businesses is vast”, Clare Josa is co-founder of EU VAT Action commented for EU Observer. “The only reason the Digital Single Market is still functioning is because awareness levels are below 5 percent, so most businesses are continuing to trade under the former system. As awareness rises, the damage will soar.”

Read the whole article. The quote above only gives a small taste of the problem caused entirely by government bureaucrats and elected officials who seem divorced from reality. And though this is a European governmental disaster, it is instructive for Americans to learn about it. Like Obamacare, the new VAT tax rules were imposed with the best of intentions, but completely ignored the reality of meeting those intentions. The result is financial ruin for thousands of businesses and individuals.

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Wyoming farmer defies the EPA

8:37 am

Defiant! A Wyoming farmer has filed suit against the EPA for demanding he disassemble a small stock pond he built on his own property, after following all the state’s rules and getting all the proper permits.

The EPA’s fines, $75K per day, have now accumulated to over $16 million. He is challenging the agency, saying that he followed all the rules, that the pond is on his own property, and that the EPA does not have jurisdiction.

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