Arab journalists demand the blacklisting of a Israeli journalist
Arab journalists demand the blacklisting of a Israeli journalist at a journalism conference in Qatar, merely because she is from Israel.
Tag: politics
Public debt and the peril of Obamacare
Public debt and the peril of Obamacare.
Countries with universal healthcare fall into two camps:
1. Totalitarian regimes like Cuba and North Korea, and authoritarian Third World countries in the Middle East and Africa.
2. Western nations that free-ride off of American military spending and its provision of international security, but nonetheless run unsustainable budgets with immense debts trying to pay for their social welfare states. [emphasis mine]
In other words, we had better repeal this monstrosity or we face economic collapse, probably preceded by a dictatorship.
Obama administration imposes new gun regulations, NRA will sue
The law is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama administration has unilaterally imposed new gun regulations on the border states to Mexico. The NRA has announced it will sue.
“Some of them seem to believe that the government can simply keep spending beyond its means forever with no negative consequences.”
Bill would let federal health researchers ban certain chemicals
Giving more power to unelected bureaucrats: A new bill would let federal health researchers unilaterally ban certain chemicals.
A senator’s flying violation causes him to introduce legislation to change FAA
Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) and pilot, sanctioned by the FAA for landing on a closed runway — the closure of which had not been publicly announced by the FAA — has introduced a bill to change how the agency polices pilots.
The government’s war on cameras and free speech
The government’s war on cameras and free speech.
Washington’s Never-Ending Scam of Fake Spending Cuts
Washington’s never-ending scam of fake spending cuts.
The politicians only get away with this because the press has let them. Which is why I always make reference back to past budgets to give some context to the so-called “cuts,” which often are exactly not that.
More evidence the debt crisis is about to go critical
More evidence the debt crisis is about to go critical.
As I say, the day of reckoning looms.
More stupidity from the Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) today sued the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Colorado for allowing caving to take place at the annual convention of the National Speleological Society.
The CBD claims that human activity can spread white nose syndrome, the mysterious ailment that has been killing millions of bats across the eastern United States. To quote:
It is well documented that the fungus believed to cause white-nose syndrome, aptly named Geomyces destructans, can be spread on the clothes and gear of people visiting caves. Scientists strongly suspect that the disease is a recent import from Europe, likely transported by someone who visited a cave there and then came to North America.
To be blunt, this statement is an outright lie.
» Read more
House proposes cutting NOAA by $103 million
More science budget news: The House today proposed cutting NOAA’s $4.59 billion budget by $103 million.
There already is some squealing about this (see the link above), but note that a $4.49 billion budget for NOAA would still be half a billion dollars more than NOAA’s 2008 budget, which is hardly what I’d call a draconian cut.
Ron Paul calls for the abolition of the TSA
Ron Paul (R-Texas) called for the abolition of the TSA yesterday.
House proposes to drop NASA’s budget to 2008 levels, eliminate Webb Telescope
The House today proposed cutting NASA’s budget back to 2008 levels while eliminating all funds for the James Webb Space Telescope.
As much as I’d hate to see the Webb telescope die, it has cost far more than planned, is way behind schedule, and carries a gigantic risk of failure. However, if I had a choice, I’d rather they cut the $1.95 billion for Congress’s homemade heavy-lift rocket, the program-formerly-called-Constellation. There is a much better chance that Webb will get completed, launched, and work, than there is for this improvised and impossibly costly Congressionally conceived rocket.
“It sounds as if the package is going to be all spending cuts with a few symbolic revenue increases.”
Global warming scientists blame coal use increase in China for recent cooling
Global warming scientists have come up with an explanation for the cooling seen in the past decade: The increase of coal burning in China.
In other words, fossil fuels can cause global warming and global cooling!
Or to put it another way, climate scientists really have no clear understanding yet of the climate, and are merely guessing when they try to predict what’s happening.
Republicans May Take ‘Mini’ Debt-Ceiling Deal
Senator Jon Cornyn (R-Texas) suggested yesterday that the Republicans might take “mini” debt-ceiling deal.
New York City business owners sick over ObamaCare
New York City business owners are sick over Obamacare.
Small to mid-size businesses, which generate close to 70 percent of US jobs, fear ObamaCare could bury them in colossal bills and future paperwork, and are now paying the price as premiums have soared in anticipation of the new regulation. “ObamaCare has been very negative for our business,” Moishe Heimowitz, principal at First Medcare, a 50-employee medical practice based in Canarsie, told The Post. “The high costs of ObamaCare and our present health-care costs have impeded our efforts to hire more people.” [emphasis mine]
Obamacare has done nothing it promised. Why don’t we just bite the bullet, show some courage, and repeal the damn thing before it does more harm?
the Plight of Muslim Women and the left’s indifference
The plight of Muslim women and the left’s indifference.
It is a curious irony that feminists in the United States haven’t taken up the cause of Muslim women. The all-female Liberal activist group Code Pink has time to organize a flotilla protesting Israel’s blockade of the West Bank, but no time to stand up for an entire population of women (some of them Palestinians, no doubt) whose most basic rights are denied on a daily basis. Why the silence? Why the complicity? Hirsi addresses the issue of western diffidence towards the plight of Muslim women in her writings: “I cannot emphasize enough how wrongheaded this is. Withholding criticism and ignoring differences are racism in its purest form. Yet these cultural experts fail to notice that, through their anxious avoidance of criticizing non-Western countries, they trap the people who represent these cultures in a state of backwardness. The experts may have the best of intentions, but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Wisconsin union law saves school district
And here are the results: A Wisconsin school district has gone from failure to success as a result of the new law limited union power.
The Kaukauna School District, in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin near Appleton, has about 4,200 students and about 400 employees. It has struggled in recent times and this year faced a deficit of $400,000. But after the law went into effect, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, school officials put in place new policies they estimate will turn that $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. And it’s all because of the very provisions that union leaders predicted would be disastrous.
Are we finally seeing a sea change in the war between the right and left?
This story today from what is generally considered a Democratic newspaper, suggests that the political debate has shifted strongly in favor of the Republicans and against Obama and the Democrats. From the Los Angeles Times: Deficit battle shaping up as GOP victory
Even as the political battle mounts over federal spending, the end result for federal policy is already visible — and clearly favors Republican goals of deep spending cuts and drastically fewer government services.
President Obama entered the fray last week to insist that federal deficits can’t be reduced through spending reductions alone. Federal tax revenue also must rise as part of whatever deficit reduction package Congress approves this summer, he said.
Obama has been pushing to end a series of what he calls tax loopholes and tax breaks for the rich. But even if Obama were to gain all the tax-law changes he wants, new revenue would make up only about 15 cents of each dollar in deficit reduction in the package. An agreement by the Republicans to accept new revenue would be a political victory for Obama because “no new taxes” has been such an article of faith for the GOP.
But substantively, budget experts note, the plan would still be dominated by cuts to government programs, many of them longtime Democratic priorities, such as Medicaid and federal employee pensions.
For a liberal newspaper to recognize and describe in detail the absurdity of Obama’s position on taxes versus cuts is remarkable. Normally a liberal newspaper would ignore the fact that the President’s suggested tax-law changes will bring in practically no significant revenue, and focus instead on the so-called refusal of Republicans to compromise. That the Los Angeles Times is not willing to carry water for Obama and the Democrats shows that the Democratic position is incredibly weak politically, and is likely to collapse if the Republicans stand firm. That the newspapers is also willing to describe fairly the Republican position, something liberal newspapers have almost never done in the past two decades, also suggests that they have had enough, and have finally realized how much their creditability has suffered in recent years by their unwillingness to cover political news honestly.
If this pattern spreads, the Republicans might find themselves getting everything — and more — of what they want. And that will be something I have not seen in almost fifty years of watching political life.