Tag: politics

Nicaragua and China break ground on new canal

2:47 pm

In a largely symbolic act, Nicaragua broke ground on Monday on the Chinese-backed construction of a new canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The project is being pushed by Nicaraguan President (and former Marxist guerrilla leader) Daniel Ortega and financed by Wang Jing, “a little-known Chinese telecom mogul well connected to China’s political elite.” And as much as normally support any ambitious effort to create business opportunities for people in poor countries, this quote from the article raised some red flags about the project I hadn’t thought of previously:

The proposed canal is set to intersect Lake Nicaragua, known locally as Lake Cocibolca, sending cargo ships and tankers straight through the largest source of freshwater in Central America. Further, the canal is expected to displace tens of thousands of mostly rural and indigenous landholders and would likely devastate over 400,000 acres of rainforests and wetlands, which scientists say are critical to local and regional biodiversity conservation efforts.

I am usually very skeptical of environmental protests since their motives are almost always to promote socialism or communism and not to protect the environment. Here however the protests are against a project being promoted by a Marxist ruler and the communist Chinese. Moreover, it does seem a reasonable question to worry about the possible introduction of ocean saltwater into “the largest source of freshwater in Central America.”

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Delta employee caught repeatedly smuggling guns on flights

1:24 pm

Does this make you feel safer? A Delta employee was arrested today for smuggling guns on several commercial flights.

Henry allegedly brought the firearms in his carry-on luggage on at least five flights from Atlanta to New York between May 1 and December 10. During that time frame, Henry supplied a total of 129 handguns and two assault rifles to co-conspirators in New York, the affidavit states. One of those co-conspirators ended up selling the firearms to an undercover New York police officer.

Henry was arrested in New York on December 10 after landing at JFK airport with 18 handguns in his bag — seven of which were loaded, the affidavit says.

He apparently used his security clearance to bypass the TSA, thus avoiding getting sexually abused while also bringing loads of weapons on board numerous flights.

But the TSA works! The government tells us so!

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After a year Obamacare still stinks

9:42 am

Link here. The quote below illustrates nicely the madness of asking the government to run healthcare, or any other complicated aspect of life:

With the state-run exchanges coming down the pike I realized that, at least in the first year, I would be able to purchase health insurance at a reasonable price. So I left my employer in July 2013 and launched my consulting firm. In November 2013, I duly filled out my application to purchase insurance on the D.C. health exchange. After that, nothing happened: The only further communication I received from the exchange was a flurry of letters and emails informing me I had the right to have my communications from the D.C. exchange sent to me in any of 20 different languages, including Irish and Navajo.

After a number of ignored emails and phone calls, I contacted a health insurance “facilitator” to see if she could help me. No dice. She did manage to make the D.C. government verify that the information I had sent them—copies of passports, utility bills, and tax statements—showed that my family did exist and resided in the District, but we still weren’t able to buy insurance going into 2014.

The D.C. exchange assured me that they would straighten things out by mid-January and allow me to buy insurance retroactive to January 1. But it wasn’t until mid-March that we managed to buy insurance. And actually paying for insurance did not end our travails: The exchange mistakenly applied my payments for March and April to January and February instead, which led to our insurance being canceled on April 1, necessitating another flurry of calls and letters. A few months later we received a letter again threatening us with immediate cancellation unless I delivered copies of our passports. Resolving this one was trickier because, upon calling the exchange, the people there denied such a notice was sent until I forwarded a copy to them.

One statistic from my enrollment efforts: In four consecutive months, I spent over 500 minutes on the phone with either the D.C. health exchange or the health insurance company we selected.

Recently, with premium increases for 2015 presumably about to be announced, I thought it might make sense to go on the exchange’s website and see if they had updated prices for competing plans. After 20 minutes of trying to log in without success, I gave up, vowing never to get on the site again.

Even if he could have logged on, he would have had problems finding out the prices for the 2015 plans. Obama did not want those prices revealed prior to the election. While a private business’s only concern would be providing service to its customers so they were willing to buy its product, a government-run operation always has to deal with the political concerns of politicians, which warps its ability to serve its customers.

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IRS leadership planned harassment of conservatives

9:55 pm

Working for the IRS: A House report, to be released on Tuesday, carefully documents how the IRS specifically targeted conservative groups for harassment back in 2010.

Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report.

The Daily Caller has obtained an advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups that an IRS adviser deemed “icky.” (That’s right. “Icky.”) “The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants,” the Oversight report states. “Each of these leaders could have and should have done more to prevent the IRS’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.”

Instead, these IRS officials worked to do whatever they could to deny conservatives the same tax benefits they routinely gave to liberal groups.

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The cowards in the Sony/North Korea kerfuffle

11:24 am

From Presidents to movie executives, everyone involved in the Sony software hack by North Korea has shown themselves to be a weak-kneed coward, willing to fold to the demands of a meglo-maniac dictator rather than to stand for freedom.

I want to underline one fact about almost all these cowards: They are almost all liberals. Except for Clooney and a handful of other liberals, the only people willing to stand up to North Korea here have been conservatives.

Meanwhile, Sony is now giving tax cheat, bigot, race-baiter, and anti-Semite Al Sharpton veto-power over the movies it makes.

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The liberal hatefest

11:06 am

Feel the love: A liberal professor (and department chair) at the University of Michigan has published an article where she advocates it is “okay to hate Republicans.”

Republicans now, she writes, are focused on the “determined vilification” of others, and have “crafted a political identity that rests on a complete repudiation of the idea that the opposing party and its followers have any legitimacy at all.”

She doesn’t seem to notice her own obvious intolerance apparently. Note also that, being a liberal, she probably considers herself the embodiment of tolerance and love.

More here, including this line: “If you are paying for the tuition of a child attending the University of Michigan, pull them out.”

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Conservatives can remove John Boehner as House speaker

10:22 am

Makes sense to me. Erik Erickson suggests that 30 conservative Republicans can force the House Republican caucus to replace John Boehner as Speaker.

Some will argue that a vote against Boehner is a mere protest vote. It is not. There are 30 House conservatives whose vote against Boehner, along with the united front of Democrats voting for Pelosi, could deny him reelection. These 30 would be exercising a veto. There would be no chance of a Democrat becoming Speaker (an obvious point but an argument sure to be advanced by some Republican), because a actual majority of the whole House of Representatives is required. Republicans would simply go back and re-nominate someone else who would not be subsequently vetoed.

In other words, if about 30 Republicans made it clear to the caucus that they will not vote for Boehner, the caucus will be forced to find a more acceptable candidate for speaker.

As my readers are aware, I have not been as outraged by the budget deal as many conservatives. That does not mean, however, that I am pleased with Boehner’s wimpy leadership. Having conservatives flex some muscle and dump him would I think be an excellent start to this next Congress. It would signal to everyone that they mean business.

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The reasons behind Russia’s proposed new space station

9:12 am

Link here.

At the heart of the latest plan is the botched construction of the Multi-purpose Laboratory Module, MLM, the Russia’s next big piece of the International Space Station, ISS. After many years of delays, the price tag for the MLM project ballooned to one billion rubles, however the all-but-completed module had to be grounded until at least 2017 due to severe quality control problems during its manufacturing at GKNPTs Khrunichev in Moscow. Repairs of the module were estimated at another billion rubles and GKNPTs Khrunichev was expected to cover this cost from its own reserves. However, the nearly bankrupt company came back with an announcement that it already owed around a billion Euro and would not be able to pay for the future work. Even if repaired and successfully launched, the MLM module, which would have taken more than two decades to build, could arrive at the ISS on the eve of its retirement.

As an alternative, Russian space officials came up with a new scheme to build a whole new station around the MLM, instead of launching it to the ISS. The project with an estimated price tag from four to five billion rubles would cover a five-year delay in the construction of the ISS. The new Russian station would also utilize all future Russian modules, which were expected to follow MLM to the ISS, such as the Node Module, UM; the Science and Power Module, NEM; an Inflatable Habitat, and the OKA-T laboratory.

There’s more. Read it all.

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Orbital Sciences picks another Russian engine for Antares

7:02 pm

The heat of competition: In its effort to replace the old Cold War Soviet-era refurbished Russian engines for the first stage of its Antares rocket, Orbital Sciences today announced that it will instead buy a different modern-built Russian engine.

Designated the RD-181, the new engine will be used on Antares in shipsets of two to accommodate as closely as possible the two-engine configuration built around the AJ-26 engines supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne, Orbital Sciences managers said Dec. 16. A descendant of the RD-171 that powers the Ukrainian-built Zenit launch vehicle, the RD-181 will be manufactured in the same Khimki factory that builds the RD-180 used on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V. It closely resembles the RD-191 on Russia’s new Angara launcher and the RD-151 that powers South Korea’s Naro-1 launch vehicle.

It appears that this is the only engine presently available that can do the job. In the long run however it puts Antares and Orbital Sciences at a competitive disadvantage. Even though the sanctions against using Russian engines, passed by Congress, only apply to military launches, Orbital’s continuing reliance on Russian engines will limit their customer base.

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What Gazans really think about Hamas

4:12 pm

A real journalist went to Gaza and the West Bank and rather than retype the crap that Hamas was feeding him, he interviewed the Palestinians there and found out what they really think of Hamas and its attacks on Israel. And it ain’t good.

This one quote sums it up nicely:

“Don’t get fooled. Gazans are not in love with Israel yet, but they do not want to fight Israel anymore. We do not want to embrace Israel; we just want to live normally without wars. We want to live and work in Israel like we used to. We are under Hamas occupation, and if you ask most of us, we would rather be under Israeli occupation, instead. I would welcome Netanyahu to rule Gaza so long as Hamas leaves, and I think most Gazans feel the same way. We miss the days when we were able to work inside Israel and make good money, we miss the security and calm Israel provided when it was here, but politically speaking, we just think of it as the better of two evils: Israel and Hamas.”

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The arrival of two new childhood diseases to America

10:42 am

Link here.

In the span of four months, at least 94 children in 33 U.S. states have developed a devastating form of paralysis with symptoms similar to polio. Some require a ventilator to breathe. And some of the greatest government health minds in the country say they have no idea what’s causing it. At the same time, during the past four months, at least 12 children have died after falling ill with a respiratory virus called Enterovirus D-68 (EV-D68). Again, federal health officials are at a loss to explain the origin of the epidemic.

It appears that the first, now dubbed acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), might be linked to the second.

In a November 7 alert to practitioners, the CDC noted, “the unusual clustering of acute limb weakness occurred against a background of a nationwide outbreak of severe respiratory illness among children due to enterovirus-D68 (EV-D68). Several of the patients in California and nearly half of the 11 cases identified in Colorado had tested positive for EV-D68 from nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs at the time of admission for their neurologic illness. This raised a possible association between these neurologic illnesses and the ongoing outbreak of respiratory disease due to EV-D68.”

Whether both are linked to the flood of illegal immigrant children allowed to enter the U.S. this past summer remains unclear.

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Another reasonable look at this week’s Congressional budget deal.

10:53 am

Link here.

Mitchell correctly notes that this deal occurred because of the reality of divided government. While Republican leaders have often acted like weak-kneed wimps, there still remains a limit on how much they can get, not controlling two-thirds of the government. As I noted earlier in discussing the science budget, the federal budget is no longer growing uncontrollably, evidence that the voters’ wishes from 2010 and 2014 are beginning to be heeded.

Only when we have elected more conservatives will it then start to shrink.

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A more positive conservative take on the budget deal

10:48 am

Link here. I think Lambo nails it. The deal might not be ideal, but it is only the beginning, and was written when Republicans only control one house of Congress, and still pushes back at many Democratic-passed initiatives.

Next year that changes. If we do not see significant cuts in the budget from Republicans when they control both houses of Congress I will then join the many conservatives who justly distrust the Republican leadership and want their heads.

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A Russian commercial reusable space shuttle?

10:29 am

A news report from Russia today described a project to build a commercial and reusable space shuttle for putting tourists into space.

The company, KosmoKurs, presently has eight employees and says it will launch by 2020. However, this quote from the article illustrates the difficulties faced by any new private companies in Russia:

Russian rocket and space industry is planned to produce this space shuttle. “We will talk to the United Rocket and Space Corporation. If we find common language, we will manufacture produce jointly with them,” the KosmoKurs head said. The company also pins hopes on backing of Russian Federal Space Agency and its scientific institutes.

Since Russia has now consolidated its entire aerospace industry into one government-controlled entity called the United Rocket and Space Corporation, any new private effort needs to get the cooperation of that company as well as the agreement of the government officials who control it. Such backing is not so easy to get, especially if the new company is seen as competition and a distraction from government goals.

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Science spending steady in proposed Congressional budget

9:18 am

The proposed budget deal announced by Congress yesterday essentially leaves level the overall spending on science.

I have a spreadsheet where I track the budgets of the various science agencies in the federal government, and from this I can say that since the Republicans took control of the House in 2010 the funding has remained very steady. Despite the partisan screams from the left that Republicans are destroying science, all these science agencies have pretty much gotten stable funding in the past four years.

Nonetheless, much of this funding could be trimmed significantly, as there is enormous featherbedding and pork among these science agencies. That won’t have a chance of happening until next year, when the Republicans control both houses of Congress. Even then, Obama and much of the Republican leadership will oppose significant cuts, Obama because he wants to see increases and the Republican leadership because they wish to maintain the status quo.

The unending growth in these budgets, routine from the 1970s through the 2000s, has definitely ceased. I also expect the political pressure to cut these budgets to grow with time. The newer Republican members of Congress tend to be much more radical than their leadership, and are much more willing to slash budgets radically.

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Lame duck Congress agrees to $1.1 trillion budget

5:03 pm

Faced with the threat of a government shutdown, Congress has worked out a continuing resolution that will fund the government through its fiscal year ending in September 2015.

There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth among conservatives about this deal. Many wanted the Republicans to fight harder now and limit this deal more. I am less worried. The political winds are clearly favoring conservatives and tea party ideals. Come next year Congress will be controlled by Republicans, and the 2016 budget will be shaped by their concerns. Whatever small gains the Democrats and Obama get now will be stymied then.

And then will come the 2016 elections. I expect an even greater win for conservatives, since Obama is making it clear he will continue to stand firm in support of Obamacare and many other liberal issues that have proved to be poison at the ballot box.

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Jonathan Gruber grilled by Congress over Obamacare

2:34 pm

During his testimony today at a House hearing, Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber essentially admitted that not calling the individual mandate penalties a tax was a trick by the Obama administration and the Democrats in order to get the law passed.

Below the fold I also include a video excerpt of Congressman Trey Gowdy’s questioning of Gruber today. It is high entertainment as Gowdy easily highlights the dishonesty of Gruber and the Obama administration in its writing and passing of Obamacare. However, it is important to stay with the clip to the very end, when Chairman Darrell Issa proves with one simple question how Gruber was not alone in his contempt for the American voter, and that this contempt was held by everyone at every intellectual conference Gruber attended and spoke at.

It is very important for the American public to be aware of this intellectual contempt, for it will tell them to stop listening to this intellectual elite. They are not trustworthy, and are willing to screw the general public in order to impose their will on everyone.
» Read more

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NOAA admits that California drought is not man-made

2:17 pm

A new study by NOAA scientists has confirmed that the recent severe California drought was not caused by the human-caused increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but was instead the result of natural weather patterns.

The persistent weather pattern over the past several years has featured a warm, dry ridge of high pressure over the eastern north Pacific Ocean and western North America. Such high-pressure ridges prevent clouds from forming and precipitation from falling. The study notes that this ridge — which has resulted in decreased rain and snowfall since 2011 — is almost opposite to what computer models predict would result from human-caused climate change. [emphasis mine]

The climate models, which have all spectacularly failed to predict the lack of warming in the past 18 years, had also predicted that global warming would cause more rain in California, not less.

The article quotes both fake scientist Michael Mann and his buddy in the climategate scandal Kevin Trenberth in their effort to refute the study. They don’t provide much convincing data to explain why the models were all wrong, only loud whines about how they are right and everyone else is wrong.

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New documents link Justice Department with IRS scandal

10:49 am

Working for the Democratic Party: Despite releasing only two pages out of more than 800 demanded documents, a freedom of information request by Judicial Watch has demonstrated that high Obama administration officials had met with Lois Lerner and were likely directly involved in the harassment of conservatives.

Once again, the evidence shows that Lois Lerner was lying when she claimed the harassment was initiated by some low level workers in Cincinnati. It also suggests that there is far more than a “smidgeon of corruption” in this whole scandal, and that it is very possible that the evidence, now being withheld, will show that President Obama himself was involved.

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The federal government mines confidential private health data

9:44 am

Finding out what’s in it: Under Obamacare, thirty-five government agencies plan to use your private health data for their own purposes.

This week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, which details the efforts of some 35 departments and agencies of the federal government and their roles in the plan to “advance the collection, sharing, and use of electronic health information to improve health care, individual and community health, and research.”

The agencies include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, NASA, the Office of Personal Management, the FCC, and a whole slew of HHS employees.

So, while Congressional legislation forces youto fill out endless forms every time you visit your doctor, and he or she is forbidden from leaving voice messages on your phone out of fear the wrong person might hear it, Obamacare allows these government bureaucrats access to everything.

Aren’t you glad they passed Obamacare?

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Arizona county to ban employees who smoke

2:57 pm

Put ’em in concentration camps! Pima County, which includes Tucson, Arizona, is considering banning the employment of any smokers.

Already employed smokers will be charged 30 percent more for their health insurance. The regulations will apply only to government employees.

I say, why waste time with this nonsense. Anyone who smokes is obviously the scum of the Earth, and should be rounded up and sent to camps, either to be re-educated, or to be killed if they can’t reform themselves. America is now an enlightened place, where freedom and individual responsibility have been replaced with the much deeper wisdom of the state!

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NSF accused of misuse of funds in giant ecological project

11:08 am

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and a contractor have been accused by both an audit and by Congress of a significant misuse of funds in a major ecological monitoring project costing almost a half a billion dollars.

With a construction budget of $433.7 million, NEON is planned to consist of 106 sites across the United States. Arrays of sensors at each site will monitor climate change and human impacts for 30 years, building an unprecedented continental-scale data set. Although some initially doubted its merits, the allure of big-data ecology eventually won over most scientists.

But a 2011 audit of the project’s proposed construction budget stalled three times when, according to the independent Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), NEON’s accounting proved so poor that the review could not be completed. Eventually, DCAA issued an adverse ruling, concluding that nearly 36% of NEON’s budget proposal was questionable or undocumented.

When the NSF green-lit the project, the agency’s inspector-general ordered the audit released on 24 November, which found unallowable expenses including a $25,000 winter holiday party, $11,000 to provide coffee for employees, $3,000 for board-of-directors dinners that included alcohol, $3,000 for t-shirts and other clothes, $83,000 for “business development” and $112,000 for lobbying.

Republican members of Congress have since been attacking NSF for this lax management. And though the amount of funds apparently misused does not seem very large compared to the size of the entire contract, I am willing to bet that this audit only uncovered a tiny portion of the misuse. Based on the recent behavior of federal agencies, I would expect this to only be an indicator of much worst abuse that is still buried behind stone-walling.

A side note: Remember how only a few weeks ago the NSF head was claiming that a shortage of funds was the reason they were unable to cure ebola. What really happened was that they were too busy spending money having parties to do their job.

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New joint venture to build Ariane 6

9:42 am

Faced with stiff competition from SpaceX, Europe has handed the construction its next generation rocket, Ariane 6, from Arianespace to a joint venture between the European companies Airbus and Safran.

The new venture will be dubbed Airbus Safran Launchers, and will take over as Europe’s launch company.

I had known that Airbus and Safran had proposed this venture to build Ariane 6, but until I read this press release I hadn’t realized that the agreed-to deal to build Ariane 6 means that Arianespace has essentially been fired by Europe as the company running Europe’s rocket operations. Arianespace, a partnership of the European Space Agency’s many partners, was never able to make a profit, while its Ariane 5 rocket costs a fortune to launch. They have now given the job to two private companies who have promised to rein in the costs. We shall see what happens.

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Increasing hostility to religion in America

7:27 pm

A yearly survey of incidents of religious discrimination in the U.S. has found a steady rise in the past three years.

For the last three years the Liberty Institute and the Family Research Council has published Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America. The legal group says they’re seeing cases of discrimination against those of faith rising rapidly. “The first time we did it, we collected about 600 cases,” Jeff Mateer, general counsel of the Texas-based Liberty Institute, told CBN News. “We went from 600 to 1,200. And this year we’re up to about 1,600. So, the threats are continuing to increase at a dramatic pace.”

The article outlines some specific stories that are quite horrifying. The worst was the case of a man fired from his job because of the sermons he gave during his free time. Sadly, that is only a sample.

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Obama administration defies IRS court order

4:46 pm

The Obama administration announced this week that it is withholding all of the more than 2,000 documents demanded by the court in connection with the IRS scandal and the possibility that the IRS divulged confidential taxpayer information to the White House.

Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew, Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff, took the documents that were set to be released and now refuses to ever turn them over. His rationale? Lew cannot release information about improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information because that would be an improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information.

Does anyone with any brains actually believe Lew and the Obama administration in this? I certainly don’t. The real reason they are are withholding the documents is because those documents will prove that the Obama administration used confidential taxpayer information for political purposes, and they must prevent that fact from being proven at all costs.

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