Tag: politics

Data tampering to create the illusion of global warming by James Hansen and NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies.

12:58 am

Data tampering to create the illusion of global warming by James Hansen and NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies.

The evidence shows that the data was adjusted to cool the past so that the present looks hotter. The question is: Why were these adjustments made? I can think of no justification, other than fraud and political manipulation.

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A new survey of the nation’s top companies finds that large numbers plan to cut benefits, hours, and hiring to deal with the costs of Obamacare.

2:08 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A new survey of the nation’s top companies finds that large numbers plan to cut benefits, hours, and hiring to deal with the costs of Obamacare.

[The survey] of top companies found that 44 percent are considering reducing health benefits to current employees due to Obamacare, confirming the fears of millions of American workers. In its December survey of chief financial officers around the country, Duke also found that nearly half are “reluctant to hire full-time employers because of the Affordable Care Act.” And 40 percent are considering shifting to part-time workers and others will hire fewer workers or fire some to avoid the costs of the program. What’s more, they said in the study, “One in five firms indicates they are likely to hire fewer employees, and another one in 10 may lay off current employees in response to the law.”

Not surprisingly, the Democrats — who have defended Obamacare through thick and thin, even shutting down the government to facilitate its implementation — have called the loss of jobs a good thing.

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Congress hovers over commercial space like a vulture

9:34 am

We’re here to help you: A House subcommittee held hearings yesterday to consider updating the Commercial Space Launch Act that regulates the commercial space tourism industry.

Forgive me if I am pessimistic about anything Congress might do. So far, every time they have updated the law Congress has increased the regulatory regimen, making it harder and more expensive for these companies to get started. Consider these words from Donna Edwards (D-Maryland), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee:
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A close look at the spending bills introduced in Congress shows that of the 70 members who sponsored the largest number of spending bills, 65 were Democrats, four were Republicans and one an independent.

10:20 am

A close look at the spending bills introduced in Congress shows that of the 70 members who sponsored the largest number of spending bills, 65 were Democrats, four were Republicans and one an independent.

This puts the lie to the claim that there is no difference between the two parties.

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A new report from the Congressional Budget Office has found that Obamacare will increase the deficit and slow the economy far more than originally predicted.

9:56 am

Finding out what’s in it: A new report from the Congressional Budget Office has found that Obamacare will increase the deficit and slow the economy far more than originally predicted.

The non-partisan agency’s report found that the healthcare law’s negative effects on the economy will be “substantially larger” than what it had previously anticipated. The CBO is now estimating that the law will reduce labor force compensation by 1 percent from 2017 to 2024, twice the reduction it previously had projected. This will decrease the number of full-time equivalent jobs in 2021 by 2.3 million, CBO said. It had previously estimated the decrease would be 800,000.

Aren’t you glad the Democrats shut the government down in October to prevent any delay or changes to their law?

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Bolden and Mikulski hold a press conference to lobby for continuing funding for the James Webb Space Telescope.

9:13 am

Bolden and Mikulski hold a press conference to lobby for continuing funding for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Before JWST entered development, around the turn of the century, program officials projected it would cost $1 billion to $3.5 billion and launch between 2007 to 2011, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Jan. 8. Now, after lengthy delays [seven years] and billions in added costs [a real budget of $8.8 billion], JWST is entering its peak development years, in which major subsystems will be put together, tested, integrated with one another, and tested again. It will be, according to Bolden, one of the most difficult parts of JWST’s construction.

“This is our tough budget year,” Bolden said. It is also the most expensive, according to projections the White House released last April with its 2014 budget proposal. Bolden spoke to the press here after he and Mikulski, JWST’s biggest ally in Congress, held a town hall meeting at Goddard, the center in charge of building the massive infrared observatory. Both NASA employees and executives from some of JWST’s major industry contractors attended.

Mikulski told reporters that automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, which reduced NASA’s 2013 appropriation to about $16.9 billion, “resulted in furloughs, shutdowns, slowdowns [and] slamdown politics [which] are exactly what could derail or cause enormous cost overruns to the James Webb.”

I am especially entertained by the disasters Mikulski lists in the last paragraph, all of which she blames on sequestration. They are identical to the lies Democratic politicians like her told before sequestration took effect, none of which happened. That she now makes believe as if these disasters did happen and expects us to believe her new lies about the future illustrates how much in contempt she holds the general public. Does she really believe people are that stupid?

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Every Democratic senator up for re-election in 2014 voted with the president at least 90 percent of the time in 2013.

4:53 pm

A fact to remember when Democrats make believe they oppose Obama in the coming election: Every Democratic senator up for re-election in 2014 voted with the president at least 90 percent of the time in 2013.

It also appears that Democrat support for Obama was higher when they controlled both houses of Congress, “prevailing on almost 97 percent of the votes in the two chambers on which [Obama] took a position in 2009 and almost 86 percent in 2010, when Democrats controlled both House and Senate.”

That was also when the Democrats shoved Obamacare down our throats.

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An Obama supporter discovers she was betrayed by Obama and Obamacare.

9:37 am

Finding out what’s in it: An Obama supporter discovers she was betrayed by Obama and Obamacare.

My plan was canceled last fall. According to the regulators behind ObamaCare, it was a subpar plan that should no longer be sold to consumers. Another 16,000 Tennesseans on the same plan were similarly dumped. Many, like me, liked their plans and wanted to keep them. This wasn’t my insurer’s fault at all. CoverTN actually fought for me to keep my health care. After I received my cancellation notice, the folks at CoverTN requested that the federal government give them a waiver, which would let them grandfather my plan into ObamaCare. Their request was rejected.

This left me with no health plan and only one choice: Buy a plan through the ObamaCare exchanges.

After weighing my options, I settled on a “platinum” plan. This was the best plan that I could choose. A “bronze,” “silver” or “gold” plan all would leave me paying exorbitant amounts of money on my frequent, and expensive, trips to doctors and specialists. But the platinum plan was the lesser of two expensive evils. My new plan costs me $373 a month, even after a small subsidy. By comparison, my old plan only cost me $57 a month. And I now pay 25 percent co-insurance on all doctor visits until I reach my out-of-pocket maximum of $1,500. This is much higher than under CoverTN.

All told, I’m likely going to pay more than $6,000 more each year for my medical care.

Just remember: Even as the insurance cancellation notices were going out last fall, the Democrats and Obama were refusing to negotiate any changes to Obamacare, even vowing to shut the government down rather than negotiate. They must really love this law and the things it is doing to innocent people like this woman.

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Slandering an American icon.

9:29 am

Slandering an American icon.

It strikes me that, in addition to (if reports are true) grotesque ambition, Ms. Streep reflects a certain warped mindset that is all too prominent in the fashionable circles of our time. I am talking about a predisposition to believe that anything iconically American is corrupt.

The full essay is here.

I should also add that Ms. Streep’s coments also illustrate nicely the typical know-it-all ignorance of modern leftwing elite culture. She knows that Walt Disney was bigoted, without knowing a goddamn thing about him.

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The Gibson Guitar Company gives the federal government the finger.

11:02 pm

The Gibson Guitar Company gives the federal government the finger.

A couple of years ago, the Feds raided the Gibson factory here in Music City, SWAT-team style, and shut the whole company down, allegedly for possessing illegally imported wood. From what I gather, it had mostly to do with how the shipping containers were labeled. Anyway, it didn’t merit a commando operation.

It was a disproportionate action on dubious grounds. Gibson later settled for $300,000. But not until after it had already lost far more than that by virtue of being forced to shut down operations.

This week Gibson has announced the “Government Series” of guitars, to celebrate the end of its tussle with the eager enforcers of the U.S. Customs Department. It’s a series of guitars made, purportedly, with the very same wood that was seized by the United States government, which was later returned at the end of the fiasco.

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Sick children in Washington state denied insurance coverage for specialty treatment at a children’s hospital.

11:28 am

Obamacare marches on: Sick children in Washington state denied insurance coverage for specialty treatment at a children’s hospital.

And then there’s this: A woman with a brain tumor finds she can’t afford treatment any longer, partly because her fees are higher and partly because her employer has cut her hours to avoid Obamacare.

In many cases, people will begin to negotiate directly with their doctors and hospitals. In the long run, this is actually a good thing, as it gets rid of the middle-man insurance company, which shouldn’t really be involved for most routine treatments.

In the short run it is a disaster, however. And just because Obamacare is causing this shift is not a reason to think Obamacare is good. The law was specifically touted by Obama and the Democrats as a way to reduce costs and get everyone health insurance. We now know that was an outright lie, as the law is doing the exact opposite.

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One in five enrollees in Obamacare are likely to have their policy canceled for not paying their premium.

2:57 pm

Finding out what’s in it: One in five enrollees in Obamacare are likely to have their policy canceled for not paying their premium.

And why have they not paid their premiums? “We figure either those people had a change of heart or thought it was too expensive.”

Wait until later this year, when the cancellation notices go out from small businesses. People will then be so happy the Democrats and Obama were willing to shut the government down in October to keep their law in place.

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The dislike of Obamacare has risen, among the uninsured.

11:41 am

Finding out what’s in it: The dislike of Obamacare has risen, among the uninsured.

Weren’t the uninsured the group of people Obamacare was designed to specifically help? If their rejection of the law has risen, it provides more evidence of the law’s failure.

Which is no surprise to anyone willing to listen to any analysis of the law by any conservatives these past four years.

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New Yorkers react to Obama’s State of the Union speech, before it happens.

10:34 am

No wonder they all vote Democrat: New Yorkers react to Obama’s State of the Union speech, before it happens.

The best question: “So, what did you think about Obama’s faking a heart attack at the end?” And the answer? Watch.

And yes, it is almost certain that every single one of the individuals in that video voted Democrat, as about 80 percent of Manhattan’s population voted for Obama in 2012.

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NOAA fudges the numbers to turn a January cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.

10:06 pm

More climate manipulation: NOAA fudges the numbers to turn a January cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.

Adjusting the numbers might be justified in certain situations, but NOAA never explains why, and the adjustments they impose always create the illusion of a warming trend, even if the raw numbers say otherwise. If the adjustments were honest, I would expect them to move the numbers up and down much more randomly. That these adjustments only go one way — in favor of global warming — either suggests they are unconsciously allowing their biases to influence their work, or they are intentionally allowing their biases to influence their work.

Either way, their work is meaningless and untrustworthy, and should be ignored as less than worthless.

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Illinois officials have ordered an eleven-year-old to close her cupcake business that was earning her $200 a month.

1:44 pm

We’re here to help you: Illinois officials have ordered an eleven-year-old to close her cupcake business that was earning her $200 a month.

“They called and said they were shutting us down,” said Chloe’s mother, Heather Stirling.

According to the Post-Dispatch, health officials informed the Stirlings that they would have to “buy a bakery or build her a kitchen separate from the one we have” for Chloe to continue selling cupcakes. “Obviously, we can’t do that,” Heather said. “We’ve already given her a little refrigerator to keep her things in, and her grandparents bought her a stand mixer. But a separate kitchen? Who can do that?” Chloe was charging $10 for a dozen cupcakes and $2 specialty cupcakes. “I’m saving for a bakery,” Chloe said in the piece that got her into trouble.

“The rules are the rules. It’s for the protection of the public health,” said health department spokeswoman Amy Yeager. “The guidelines apply to everyone. People will react how they choose to react. But it is our job.”

If this doesn’t illustrate why the rules are a bad idea in the first place, I don’t know what will. A free society allows for this kind of creative innovation, and also allows the possibility that maybe all cupcakes won’t be perfect.

Sadly, we don’t live in that free society any longer.

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Multiple U.S. science agencies have been accused of fudging data to fake the existence of global warming.

9:34 am

Someone else has noticed: Multiple U.S. science agencies have been accused of fudging data to fake the existence of global warming.

The “adjustment” schemes in the official U.S. dataset are so drastic, according to Goddard’s analysis, that they managed to “turn a 90 year cooling trend into a warming trend,” he said, suggesting that there may be a “software bug” at work. “Bottom line is that the [NOAA National Climatic Data Center] U.S. temperature record is completely broken, and meaningless,” Goddard concluded. “Adjustments that used to go flat after 1990 now go up exponentially. Adjustments which are documented as positive are implemented as negative.”

Respected climatologist and NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer actually showed evidence of what Goddard described as early as April of 2012, saying that “virtually all of the USHCN warming since 1973 appears to be the result of adjustments NOAA has made to the data.” Commenting on the latest findings, Dr. Spencer said that his own examination of the data and corrections to account for urban heat island (UHI) effects “support Steve’s contention that there’s something funny going on in the USHCN data.” He also called the NOAA methodology for adjusting the data “opaque” and said he believes it is prone to serious errors.

This article is essentially covering what I have already noted, that much of the data coming from NASA and NOAA has been seriously compromised, with past temperatures adjusted downward without any clear justification in order to make it appear as if the climate has warmed in recent decades.

I will be talking about this very issue tonight on Coast to Coast.

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“The most dangerous years of the Obama presidency are upon us.”

7:08 pm

“The most dangerous years of the Obama presidency are upon us.”

His conclusion says it all:

Holding the House and taking back the Senate in 2014, while extremely important, cannot stop someone who considers himself above it all. A united front is needed for the next three years. So what is Republican and Congressional leadership planning?

A war on the Tea Party.

This is no time to petty internal politics. It is time to unite against the threat the Democrats pose, which they have now repeatedly admitted to quite openly, which is to deny their opponents any say in the political process.

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A newspaper chain plans to assemble a state-by-state database of every person permitted to carry a concealed weapon.

3:34 pm

Freedom under attack: A newspaper chain plans to assemble a state-by-state database of every person permitted to carry a concealed weapon.

The CEO of the chain has released a statement saying that

[Civitas Media] never had any plans or intentions of publishing in print or online lists of holders of “conceal and carry” permits. Nor will Civitas Media develop databases of permit holders. A poorly crafted internal memo meant to highlight editorial discussions and planning incorrectly indicated that such a database was being planned; it has been considered and rejected.

Maybe so, but that such an idea was even considered by some of the company’s editors tells you a great deal about what those editors believe in, and it surely isn’t privacy, the second amendment, or personal rights.

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