The competition heats up: Roscosmos revealed today that Russia intends to assemble its own space station beginning in 2024, and that they will use existing modules from ISS to do it.
If this happens, the U.S. will have a problem with ISS, which as presently designed needs the Russian modules. Then again, none of this is confirmed yet, and 2024 is a long time from now.
Finding out what’s in it: An H&R report has found that more than half of the poorest Obamacare enrollees face a tax liability of around $500 at tax time.
The report also found that the Obamacare penalty for not having insurance is now averaging about $172. This number however will go up in future years as the full penalty is phased in.
But isn’t Obamacare the “Affordable Care Act”, as Obama and the Democrats named it? It can’t cost us more. They said so! They promised!
Two stories today today illustrate how the field of climate science is being destroyed by politics.
In the first, a leading climate skeptic chortles over the resignation of Rajendra Pachauri, the man who has headed the IPCC since 2002, who has stepped down because of allegations of sexual harassment by an employee at the institute he heads in New Delhi. In the second, Willie Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist who has published numerous peer-reviewed papers raising questions about global warming science, is attacked for not fully disclosing the sources of his income.
In both cases, the two sides in the global warming debate are using these allegations as ammunition to attack the believability of each side’s stance on the scientific question of global warming. And in both cases, the stories raise literally no questions about the science itself that each man advocated.
I admit that I have attacked Pachauri numerous times in the past, but each time it was because he demonstrated outright ignorance of the field of climate science or had been caught making significant scientific errors. His resignation here however has nothing to do with the science published in IPCC reports, and should not be used as fodder to criticize the theory of human-caused global warming.
Similarly, none of the articles in the mainstream science press about the allegations against Soon have raised a single question about his actual results. All they have done is attack him for not revealing all of his funding sources. His research itself still appears valid. That the largest science journals, Science and Nature, have published articles attacking Soon, with the Smithsonian now piling on as well, without presenting any evidence that he had falsified any of his work, illustrates how corrupt this field has become. The science for these major science journals no longer matters. All that matters is destroying someone who was apparently successful in bursting the balloon on some global warming science.
Until everyone stops playing this game and focuses instead on the data itself and what that data is really telling us, we will get no closer to truly understanding the climate of the Earth. And tragically, I see far too little effort in the climate field to do this.
The Washington florist whose entire assets a judge has ruled can be confiscated because she refuses to participate in a same-sex wedding because of her Christian religion has rejected outright a settlement offered to her by the state’s attorney general.
Ms. Stutzman [the florist] rejected Friday a settlement agreement offered by Mr. Ferguson [the attorney general] that would have required her to pay $2,001 in damages and legal fees after a judge ruled last week that she violated state law by declining to provide services for a same-sex wedding. “My primary goal has always been to bring about an end to the Defendants’ unlawful conduct and to make clear that I will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,” Mr. Ferguson said in a statement.
The agreement also would require Ms. Stutzman to agree “not to discriminate in the future,” which means she must provide custom floral arrangements for same-sex weddings or stop doing weddings altogether, said Peter LaVallee, a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office.
In rejecting the offer, Stutzman was very blunt about her reasons.
“Your offer reveals that you don’t really understand me or what this conflict is all about,” Ms. Stutzman said in a letter to Mr. Ferguson. “It’s about freedom, not money. I certainly don’t relish the idea of losing my business, my home, and everything else that your lawsuit threatens to take from my family, but my freedom to honor God in doing what I do best is more important.
“…I pray that you reconsider your position. … I kindly served Rob [the gay plaintiff] for nearly a decade and would gladly continue to do so. I truly want the best for my friend. I’ve also employed and served many members of the LGBT community, and I will continue to do so regardless of what happens with this case.”
She concluded, “You chose to attack my faith and pursue this not simply as a matter of law, but to threaten my very means of working, eating, and having a home. If you are serious about clarifying the law, then I urge you to drop your claims against my home, business, and other assets and pursue the legal claims through the appeal process.”
The mildness of the attorney general’s offer suggests to me that he is feeling some political heat. He looks like a tyrant and a bad guy who is trying to destroy this woman expressly because of her religious beliefs. He thus wants this case to end with a victory, but to end as quickly as possible.
The glitches keep coming! Because almost a million taxpayers were provided incorrect information by the Obamacare online system the Obama administration has announced that there will be delays in sending them their tax refunds, with many being forced to resubmit their tax returns.
The truth is that these kinds of screw-ups should be and will be routine in any system as complex and Rube Goldberg-like as Obamacare is.
Bur just keep reminding yourself: The Democrats continue to support this law in every way, refusing to consider any change under any condition.
The law is for little people: The Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it will delay for five months enforcing a part of Obamacare pertaining to small businesses.
It seems that under Obamacare businesses are no longer allowed to offer employees spending accounts which can be used cover a portion of the cost of buying individual health plans. (Another example of not being allowed to keep your plan, even if you like it. Period.) If they continue to offer these accounts they could get fined $100 per day per employee. If they don’t, their employees might find themselves without health insurance.
So, the Obama administration is not going to enforce another Obamacare provision for five more months, even though this law was Obama’s gift to the nation and was so perfect it wasn’t necessary to discuss its passage with anyone outside the Democratic Party. In fact, it was so perfect the Democrats themselves didn’t need to read the law before they voted for it!
Link here.
A superb essay. I have written about this myself numerable times, but sadly our modern elite intellectual society finds it somehow impossible to get the point, which Shaw sums up very well in his last paragraph:
The point of all this is simply to say that scientific conclusions change over the ages. Complicated things take time. But when you come out and start lecturing us – or worse, start telling us how the government should orient policy – based on your own favorite theory of the day while not yet proving it to a satisfactory degree (even to we simpletons) then you can expect some of us to push back and demand you show your work. And it’s not because the pastor told us to think that way on Sunday.
Read it all. It also illustrates quite well why increasingly the public does not trust scientists or journalists when it comes to hot button issues like climate change.
John Hawkins has released a blockbuster report revealing which tea pary/Republican PACS are legitimate and helpful to conservative candidates and which are nothing more than scams.
The bottom line:
If you gave a dollar to the gold standard of PACs that we researched, Club for Growth Action, 88 cents of every dollar you gave went to a candidate. On the other hand, there were a number of PACs that gave 10% or less of the money they received to candidates. When there’s a 78 cents per dollar difference in the effective use of money between the top of the heap and more than half of the PACs we researched, there’s an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed.
It is essential that conservatives review carefully the graph at the link before they give money to anyone.
Link here. This is an incredibly detailed and intelligent background analysis into what the Islamic State is, what it stands for, the roots of those principles, and the dangers it presents to the civilized world.
The article is long but worth every word. Number one take-away from this essay, however, are these two paragraphs:
The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.
Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal. [emphasis in original]
Another quote almost as important:
[T]he Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. The lack of objective reporting from its territory makes the true extent of the slaughter unknowable, but social-media posts from the region suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks.
I am once again reminded of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, where he bluntly told us what he intended to do, and was ignored. We ignore the Islamic State and what it stands for at our very very great peril.
Who, when faced with numerous death threats from Islamic fundamentalists — including an actual physical attack last week that killed one and wounded three — had this to say, “I’m not going to let this attack scare me. I’m going to continue just like I always have.”
Such an individual should be heralded by all in our society and backed up with so much firepower from everyone that no terrorist would dare attack him. Sadly, this is not the case.
Finding out what’s in it: Congressional Democrats are pleading with the Obama administration to create an illegal waiver of the Obamacare tax penalities for people who fail to obtain health insurance by this past weekend’s deadline.
Idiots. They have voted numerous times in lockstep for Obamacare, resisting all efforts to repeal or even amend it. Yet when the law they supported and forced upon us is finally about to take effect they suddenly discover they don’t like it?
A lack of enthusiasm by Republican senators for President Obama’s candidate to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General suggests her appointment might actually be threatened.
To be confirmed by the Senate, attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch only needs four Republicans to support her nomination. But it is unclear where those votes will come from. Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) is the only Republican so far who has signaled his intention to vote for Lynch, though several others have spoken favorably about her.
Europe’s last ATV cargo freighter for ISS left the station and burned up over the Pacific Ocean this past weekend.
Because of a technical problem on the ATV, a camera designed to record what happened inside the freighter as it burned up during re-entry was removed prior to undocking so that it could be used instead during a later re-entry.
Meanwhile, instead of supplying ISS with cargo, Europe has decided to meet its contribution to ISS by building the service module for NASA’s Orion/SLS program, which has no plans to ever go to ISS. Note, however, that Europe has also not committed to building more than two service modules, so how Orion/SLS will go beyond Earth orbit after these two modules have been launched remains a mystery.
If you are scratching your head at all this, you are not alone. To me, this one decision alone illustrates quite neatly the utter stupidity of big government-run programs.
On the final weekend before the deadline to sign up for health insurance, the Obamacare website had a serious technical problem that prevented some people from completing their enrollment.
After you read the description below of the problem, I dare you to tell me you that we are now better off with this law:
Some people trying to get coverage hadn’t been able to get their income information electronically verified. That’s crucial because the amount of financial assistance to help pay premiums is based on people’s income.
The health care law offers health insurance to people who don’t have coverage on the job. More than 8 in 10 of those who apply qualify for help. Without it, most can’t afford the coverage. The IRS handles income verification for the HealthCare.gov website. In a statement, Hill said the problem was due to issues with “external verification sources.”
The glitch seemed to affect people with new applications. People who previously submitted their income details — but hadn’t completed the final step of picking a plan — were still able to do so.
This is a wonderful example of finding out what’s in it. The law makes the process of getting health insurance so difficult and complex, with so many different hands in the process, that it is literally impossible for problems and “glitches” (oh how I hate the bureaucratic word) not to happen. Either something is going to go wrong, or you will have to wait forever to get everyone to agree to the process.
But don’t worry. That it doesn’t work is irrelevant. It was the good intentions of Obama and the Democrats that really matter. Who cares if their ideas are stupid, unworkable, or foolish? They care!
The religion of peace strikes again: At a free-speech event in Copenhagen — organized by backers of one of the cartoonists who ridiculed Mohammad — masked gunmen unleashed a hail of bullets, killing one and wounding three.
The French ambassador was there and has reported that this was clearly a terrorist attack similar to the murderous attack on the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Update: Three people are wounded when a gunman fired shots at a Copenhagen synagogue. It is not yet clear if this attack is linked to the attack above.
Obama would claim these are all random attacks. But then, delusional people will believe anything.
In related news, Islamic terrorists attacked a polio vaccination team in Pakistan, killing one and wounding another. The article also reports that in a separate incident two polio workers and two security guards have gone missing.
At what point will our intellectual elites get their heads out of their asses and recognize the war that Islam is waging on the free world?
Theft by government: The IRS has seized nearly $19,000 of a widow’s savings because it didn’t like the manner in which she deposited it in the bank.
After [an October policy change that was supposed to stop most of these kinds of cash confiscations], federal prosecutors in Iowa agreed to return money the IRS seized from two people accused of structuring, including a restaurant owner who had $33,000 taken and a doctor who fought to get back $344,000 in earnings from his medical practice. But prosecutors declined to drop the civil forfeiture case over $18,775 the IRS seized from [the widow Janet] Malone.
Instead, they added a misdemeanor criminal charge last week alleging she willfully violated the law, after her husband had been warned about the practice four years ago. Malone is expected to plead guilty next week and let the government keep the money, under a plea agreement filed Monday. The charge carries up to one year in jail and a $250,000 fine.
Note that in every one of these cases, no actual crime was every committed. The money was earned legally. The only issue was the manner in which the individuals deposited the money. The IRS didn’t like it.
Finding out what’s in it: Because of required Obamacare regulations and taxes on their union health plans, the unions representing workers at 29 west coast commercial ports are now threatening to strike and shut the ports down.
Obamacare imposes a 40 percent tax on health benefits deemed too generous by the government. Health benefits exceeding $10,200 a year in value for individuals or $27,500 for families are defined as “Cadillac” plans and are subject to the tax. Health benefits for longshoremen exceed $40,000 per employee, meaning the union would be served an enormous tax bill when the penalty is imposed in 2018. The longshoremen’s contract expired in July, 2014 and contract talks have stalled, in large part, over whether workers or employers will pay the new Obamacare tax.
But hey, these unions voted for and continue to support the Democratic Party without question, even as the Democratic Party continues to block any repeal or changes to Obamacare. To these union leaders, it all must be Bush’s fault!
Working for the Democratic Party: The Obama administration has denied an entire freedom of information request from the web news outlet The Hill in connection with the IRS scandal and the administration’s harassment of its political opponents.
The Hill asked for 2013 emails and other correspondence between the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The request specifically sought emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner and Treasury officials, including Secretary Jack Lew, while the inspector general was working on its explosive May 2013 report that the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to review the political activities of tax-exempt groups.
TIGTA opted not to release any of the 512 documents covered by the request, citing various exemptions in the law. The Hill recently appealed the FOIA decision, but TIGTA denied the appeal. TIGTA also declined to comment for this article.
This denial is essentially another example of the Obama administration defying the law, as they really don’t have any right to refuse to release these documents. The Freedom of Information law was expressly written to force government agencies to release documents in these kinds of circumstances, not hold them back.
Lying journalists like Brian Williams are the standard in today’s mainstream media.
Whether or not the entertaining Williams keeps his job, we have a media establishment overrun with serial distorters, gotcha artists, exaggerators and liars. And whether Williams stays or goes, people will continue to report low levels of trust in journalists. That’s because the problem is far bigger than the occasional Sabrina R. Erdely, Stephen Glass or Brian Williams.
Finding out what’s in it: Staples has implemented a strict policy that requires its workers to work less than 25 hours per week or be fired in order to avoid Obamacare.
The company claims this policy has been in place for years, but I suspect this is not quite true. What is true is that Obamacare has significantly crippled American industry by imposing such oppressive costs and regulations on growing businesses that businesses have been forced to stop growing in order to survive.
But don’t worry. Just days ago the Democrats in Congress stood firm and once again voted in unison in favor of keeping Obamacare the law of the land. No repeals of any kind if they have they way!
