Finding out what’s in it: Major unions are now calling for the repeal of Obamacare.
Maybe a wiser action would have been to to read the damn law beforehand, or at least demand that Congress do so, before supporting it blindly because it was proposed by their saint and savior, Barack Obama?
Pushback: The two Colorado Democrats who were key instigators of that state’s new gun control laws were both decisively voted out of office yesterday in recall elections.
The election, which came five months after the United States Senate defeated several gun restrictions, handed another loss to gun-control supporters. It also gave moderate lawmakers across the country a warning about the political risks of voting for tougher gun laws.
The recall elections ousted two Democratic state senators, John Morse and Angela Giron, and replaced them with Republicans. Both defeats were painful for Democrats – Mr. Morse’s because he had been Senate president, and Ms. Giron’s because she represented a heavily Democratic, working-class slice of southern Colorado.
The article says almost nothing about Angela Giron’s defeat, which I find intriguing. She was not expected to lose, considering her district was so Democratic, but her margin of defeat was actually larger than Morse’s. See also this article for a very good election analysis which suggests that any effort by Democrats to impose oppressive gun control laws is going to backfire for them very badly.
An experienced Russian astronaut, scheduled to fly to ISS in 2015, has unexpectedly resigned.
No explanation other than that he found “a more interesting job” was given for his resignation, but this paragraph might give us a hint:
The Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center has been rocked by reorganization problems since 2009, when it was transferred from the Defense Ministry to the civilian Federal Space Agency. An unnamed Russian cosmonaut told the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper last year that the prolonged reorganization had affected cosmonauts’ income and career prospects, breeding discontent in the ranks.
Finding out what’s in it: Taxing both the rich and the sick to pay for Obamacare.
Key quotes:
The change will negatively impact parents who have special needs children and who use FSA funds to help pay for tuition in special needs schools, says Xavier Epps, owner of XNE Financial Advising.
and:
For the more than 10 million individuals and families that claim medical expenses in 2011, there’s more bad news. In order to claim medical expense deductions in 2013, the claims must be at least 10% of AGI, up from 7.5% in the past. There’s an exception for people who are age 65 and older at the end of the year and for married taxpayers with only one spouse age 65 or over. Their threshold will remain at 7.5% until the 2017 tax year.
Y’know, I have yet to find any documented evidence of Obamacare lowering costs or improving health coverage anywhere. So far, this law has done nothing but balloon costs, limit options, and reduce the ability of people to either get health insurance they can afford or healthcare they need.
But that’s all right. The Democrats passed it! It must be good! Let’s vote for them again so they can do this kind of masterwork in many other places. (Right now, the Middle East and Syria comes to mind.)
A businessman fights a federal regulatory effort that destroyed his business. The government responds by trying to destroy him.
Read the article. It will send chills down your spine. The business was legal, did no harm, and was very successful. The government shut it down, killed it. Now they are going after the creator because he had tried to stop them.
More extreme weather, eh? There were no Atlantic hurricanes in August this year, for the first time in eleven years.
As I’ve noted repeatedly, there is no evidence yet of an increase of extreme weather events as predicted by global warming advocates. In fact, some recent data suggests a decline, though I personally wouldn’t take that seriously either.
So, when Al Gore or Barack Obama or Dianne Feinstein starts running around like Chicken Little, claiming the sky is about to fall, remember these facts.
Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS harassment of conservatives continues.
An IRS letter sent to [a tea party] group last week and obtained by The Washington Times contains a laundry list of requests related to virtually all the group’s activities, including its involvement in the 2012 election cycle and its get-out-the-vote efforts, fundraising activities, all radio and TV advertising, and other information. The IRS also is asking for detailed financial records, including “the amounts and percentages of your total expenses that were for fundraising activities in the tax year 2011, 2012 and 2013.” [emphasis mine]
Key quote: “We got away with discriminating against you and we’re not stopping.”
If you like your insurance you won’t keep your insurance: Aetna pulls out of New York because of Obamacare.
That’s the fifth state that Aetna has fled in its effort to survive the Democratic Party’s effort to reform our healthcare system.
In comparison to the ruined economies of the Arab Spring — tourism shattered, exports nonexistent, and billions of dollars in infrastructure lost through unending violence — Israel is an atoll of prosperity and stability. Factor in its recent huge gas and oil finds in the eastern Mediterranean, and it may soon become another Kuwait or Qatar, but with a real economy beyond its booming petroleum exports.
Israel had nothing to do with either the Arab Spring or its failure. The irony is that surviving embarrassed Arab regimes now share the same concerns of the Israelis.
Read it all. It gives you a different but (I think) more accurate perspective on the chaos in the Middle East.
An honest look at least one of our nation’s problems.
Healthcare premiums have climbed almost $3,000 since 2009.
The important point however is this:
And while annual premium increases have moderated over the past two years, that’s due to trends in the insurance market largely unrelated to ObamaCare, and trends the law could actually reverse.
To save money on insurance people had been shifting to plans with high deductibles. Obamacare however has outlawed such plans, thus requiring health insurance coverage in cases where people really don’t need it or can’t afford it.
How one man saved $17,000 on the cost of a surgery.
Finding out what’s in it: UPS announced today that it is dropping the spousal coverage for 15,000 employees because of the cost of Obamacare.
To the Obama administration and the Democrats, this is proof that Obamacare works. According to a spokeswoman for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “The health care law will make health insurance more affordable, strengthen small businesses and make it easier for employers to provide coverage to their workers.” Well, obviously!
Orwell called this kind of thinking doublethink, the ability to hold two completely contradictory statements in your brain and see nothing contradictory about it.
Freedom in today’s America: “Impeach Obama” protesters arrested for peaceably assembling.
With video, which is definitely worth watching. I would have done exactly as these protesters did, been arrested, and would be on the phone with my lawyers this instant putting together a lawsuit. The cop who made the arrest in this case broke the law and should pay for that.
And I agree with one of the comments at the website: If the protesters had labeled themselves “Occupy Wall Street” the cops would have probably brought them donuts instead while allowing them to shut down traffic illegally.
Ignoring what’s in it: The Obama administration has failed to meet more than half of the deadlines mandated by Obamacare.
Meanwhile, here’s another example of a company switching all of its workers to part-time to avoid Obamacare. The result is that those employees will not only earn less, they will lose their company health insurance. So much for Obama’s promise, “If you like your healthplan you keep your healthplan.”
“Liberals have targeted this man for personal destruction to create a climate of fear.”
It is beyond disgusting the number of recent witch hunts being instigated by the left against individuals who have merely said things they didn’t like. Unfortunately, what’s worse is the willingness of too many Americans to pay no attention, or make believe it isn’t happening, or to make excuses for this totalitarian behavior merely because of partisan favoritism.
Oppression is oppression, and should not be tolerated by anyone, not matter what the politics.
And then there is the media, which has joined in the effort to target the weak and innocent while protecting the powerful who do commit acts of bigotry and hate.
What racists! True the Vote has found 173 cases of voter fraud in Florida.
These are examples where someone has registered and voted in two different states. According to modern Democratic Party dogma, trying to stop such behavior is clearly racist and an attempt to suppress the vote, which is probably why the IRS as well as other federal agencies aggressively harassed True the Vote for several years.
Climate fraud: An analysis of the climate models used by global warming advocates to illustrate the consequences of climate change finds them to be totally useless.
These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis: certain inputs (e.g. the discount rate) are arbitrary, but have huge effects on the SCC estimates the models produce; the models’ descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc, with no theoretical or empirical foundation; and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the SCC, the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome. IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision, but that perception is illusory and misleading. [emphasis added]
The law is such an inconvenient thing: A federal appeals court has ruled that the Obama administration has been violating the law by delaying a decision on the proposed nuclear waste facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
This is the typical behavior for this Democratic administration. Whether it involves Obamacare, nuclear waste, environmental rules, gun smuggling, federal appointments, or IRS tax regulations, the White House and President Obama believe themselves above the law, able to do anything they want, regardless of what the law actually says.
But don’t worry, Democrats, Obama will protect you from those evil tea party conservatives who simply want the Constitution followed!
Modern America: A teacher molests an underage student for three years and, when caught, his fellow teachers come forward to support him, not the student.
At the sentencing hearing seven teachers plus a school board member, stood with the teacher, Neal Erickson, calling for a reduced sentence. The judge’s response?
Judge Michael Bumgartner told Erickson he was “appalled and ashamed that the community could rally around, in this case, you,” according to the Herald. “What you did was a jab in the eye with a sharp stick to every parent who trusts a teacher,” he said shortly before sentencing Erickson to 15-30 years in prison.
The parents of the student are now trying to get these teachers fired, as well as recall the school board member. The local authorities are hesitating out of fear of lawsuits, while hundreds of parents are telling them if they don’t fire these teachers they will pull their kids from these public schools.
