Pigs fly! An environmental report by the Obama administration has admitted that the Keystone oil pipeline would do little environmental damage.
Finding out what’s in it: The Obama administration today released more than 700 pages of new regulations to implement parts of Obamacare.
Won’t it be nice to have to deal with the equivalent of the Motor Vehicle Administration whenever you have to see your doctor in the future?
To me, the most irritating thing about this might not be the law itself, but having to hear people who voted for Obama complain about it. And they will complain. Everyone will. I guarantee it.
Pushback: The boycott by gun and ammo manufacturers of anti-gun states has now grown to over 100.
A wonderful montage of people refusing to answer questions at Border Patrol checkpoints.
I’ve embedded the montage below the fold. I especially like the one near the end, where the man driving the motor home expressly tells the officer that he is not exiting his vehicle and that they are not getting inside without a warrant. The officer eventually has to back down because that is exactly right: without a warrant they have no right to search his vehicle.
The best however is the last.
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Incompetence: Even as Democratic lawmakers scream for more gun control laws, the enforcement of the current laws by the Obama administration has declined by 40 percent.
The Syracuse study found the number of federal weapons prosecutions fell from about 11,000 in 2004 to about 6,000 under the Obama administration in 2011 — and ticked up to 7,770 in 2012. The GOP letter also cited data from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), which found in 2010, of 6 million Americans who applied to buy a gun, less than 2 percent — or 76,000 — were denied. Of those, the ATF referred 4,732 cases for prosecution. Of them, just 44 were prosecuted, and only 13 were punished for lying or buying a gun illegally.
Gee, if these idiots really care about “the children,” maybe the first thing they should do is handle the responsibilities they’ve already given themselves?
Pushback: Beretta has threatened to leave Maryland over the state’s proposed new gun bans.
Pushback: Public pressure is now being applied to gun manufacturers who are trying to weasel out of the boycott against gun-banning states.
In other words, Armalite is trying to play both ends against the middle. They want to say they are on-board with the boycott (sort of) to placate gun owners, but they aren’t; they’re still going to continue selling to individual police officers… just not to the departments. Armalite will sell to every individual officer in the department that wants an AR-15, but they won’t sell to the department’s official purchasing agent. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
Owens suggests spending your money with other companies and I agree. We are reaching the moment where you are either for freedom or against it. And if you act against it you are not my friend and will get none of my support.
Does this make you feel safer? “All you need to know to get on a plane these days is the color of your house.”
I realize that this is actually an example of the TSA trying to be helpful to a U.S. citizen, but it also illustrates the complete uselessness of all TSA airport security.
Doesn’t this make you feel safer? The TSA detained a wheelchair-bound three-year-old girl, took away her stuffed doll, and refused to allow the parents to videotape the child’s pat down. Videotape at the link.
It is necessary for more people to challenge these thugs. (I don’t care that the agents in the video tried to be polite to the mother, they were still acting like brainless thugs.)
The fascists are out: A gun control bill introduced in the state of Washington includes a provision that allows the police to conduct yearly house searches, without a warrant, of any gun owner’s home.
Such searches would violate the fourth amendment of the Constitution, and in my case, any cop who showed up at my door would be politely told that I do not consent to any searches, without a warrant. They don’t get in my door.
Meanwhile, the Democrats who sponsored this bill, without reading it of course, are now tripping over themselves to disavow it, as if that would somehow make everyone forget that they introduced it.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, seven million people — twice the number previously predicted — will lose their health insurance under Obamacare.
February 23, 2013: A day of resistance.
Finding out what’s in it: Electronic medical records — required by Obamacare — are costing doctors time while taking them away from their patients.
Probably the biggest problem with electronic records is simply that it requires the physician to input all notes and orders, rather than dictate them. As a result, as my bride puts it, “they’ve taken the highest paid person in the department and turned him/her into a data entry clerk”. On average, she and her colleagues spend more time per patient wading through drop-down menus, clicking boxes and filling in required but utterly irrelevant information than they do at the bedside, actually treating the patient. In short, it’s her experience that they see fewer patients per shift than they did previously, and spend less time with each one, now that they are required to sit down at a computer after seeing each patient and jumping through hoops to place orders instead of, as previously, simply telling the nurse what is needed and then moving on to the next patient. [emphasis mine]
Have you noticed in your recent visits to the doctor how the doctor seems to be spending his entire visit with you staring at his laptop, typing continuously as you talked? I have. Say goodbye to simplicity in the medical field. The future shall be complex bureaucracy and less medical treatment.
The rise of fascism: A new study has found that five Gulf Coast states have so many vague environmental laws that anyone who does anything outdoors can be found guilty of something.
And it has happened. Read the article.
Then there’s this good news: “Any federal regulation enacted by Congress or executive order…offending the constitutional rights of my citizens will not be enforced by me or my deputies.”
Update: A second Oregon sheriff has joined the first in declaring he will not enforce any federal regulation that violates the Constitution.
The law is for little people: David Gregory will not be prosecuted.
This despite the fact that the D.C. Attorney General even admits that Gregory clearly broke the law.
This travesty more than anything demonstrates how pointless these laws are. Gregory waved a high capacity magazine on camera to illustrate the need to ban such items, even though he was doing so in a place, Washington, D.C., where such magazines were already banned. Not only did Gregory prove the law was stupid, the decision not to prosecute him proves that the law exists merely for political reasons. It is used only when it benefits the powers in control. Gregory is on the side of gun control, so of course he gets a pass. Innocent gun owners and supporters of gun rights who happen to be caught traveling in DC with such a banned item, however, can expect jail time.
The part-timing of America: An Omaha-based chain of fast food restauants has decided to cut the hours of all non-management employees workers’ hours to part time in order to avoid the costs of Obamacare.
And they voted for it! Under Obamacare health insurance rates for young adults will skyrocket 40 percent next year, according to a new study.
We’ve only just begun: Another federal judge has ruled that a private company does not have to follow the Obamacare contraceptive mandate.
Hobby Lobby has decided to face millions in fines rather than bow to the Obamacare contraceptive mandate.
They will continue to provide their employees healthcare, but will refuse to include any payments for contraceptives as now required by Obamacare. For standing by their beliefs and doing this, it is very possible this company could end up going bankrupt, thereby putting 13,000 employees out of work. Not only will they lose the healthcare plans that Obama promised they could keep, they won’t even have jobs!
Thank you Obama for giving us Obamacare. And thank you the American voters who have decided to allow this disaster of a law to go forward. Sadly, the worst is yet to come.
Finding out what’s in it: The CEO of Aetna says that Obamacare will double health care premiums.
I think he is underestimating the rise in costs. He is also not mentioning the almost certain decline in care that will happen as well.
We’re here to help you: A zoning board and the LAPD have shut down a thirty-year-old successful burger stand, apparently because they think it attracts crime.
Watch the video at the link. The result of this brain-dead action will be an abandoned building in an abandoned neighborhood. Good going, California!
We’re here to help you: The head of the Interior Department has ordered the shutdown of a century-old California oyster company.
Two key quotes from the article illustrate the foolishness and oppressive nature of this decision:
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In response to my condemnation of the insane requirement by Obamacare that restaurants and take-out pizza delivery services publicly post on their menus the calorie count for every item, including a calorie count for each of the literally thousands of topping variations for pizzas, regular reader Patrick Ritchie asked me, “What level of super market labeling would you support?”
I replied, “I think the federal government has no business requiring any labeling at all. This is a state matter, pure and simple, both for practical and Constitutional reasons.”
He responded, “Which practical reasons? I’m genuinely curious. What makes a state regulation inherently better than a federal one?”
My response to this last question was quite long, and after reading it Patrick suggested I elevate the comment into a full headlined post. I have decided to do so. Here is what I wrote, edited slightly for clarity:
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Finding out what’s in it: The requirement in Obamacare that restaurants list calories on their menus will cost billions.
President Obama’s own Office of Management and Budget listed the menu display imposition as the third most burdensome statutory requirement enacted that year, forcing retail outlets to expend 14,536,183 work hours every year just to keep Uncle Sam happy. Instead of applying the menu rule just to restaurants, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided on its own initiative to sweep certain convenience stores and pizza delivery storefronts under the calorie-count requirements. FDA bureaucrats are even micromanaging compliance, down to determining the sizes of fonts that can be used on menu signs.
This regulation does nothing to lower the cost of healthcare, and in fact increases costs in more ways than can be counted. Moreover, it is less than useless in improving the public’s health.
However, it does do a lot for federal bureaucrats, giving them more power over businesses and our lives. Hooray!
Finding out what’s in it: When you go for your annual physical — free under Obamace — the doctor cannot treat you for, or even answer questions about, any new ailments.
We are obligated by law to code specifically for the reason of the visit. An annual exam is one specific code; you can not mix this with another code, say, for rectal bleeding. This annual visit covers the exam and “discussion about the status of previously diagnosed stable conditions.” That’s the exact wording under that code — insurance will not cover any new ailment under that code. If you are here for that annual exam, you will not be covered if you want to discuss any new ailment or unstable condition. I cannot bait and switch to another code — that’s illegal. We, the physicians, are audited all the time and can lose our license for insurance fraud.
You, the patient, will then have to make a decision. Do you want your “free” yearly exam, or do you want to pay for a visit which is coded for a particular, new problem? You can have my “free” exam if you only discuss what Obamacare wants me to discuss.
In other words, this so-called “free annual physical” is a fraud. In fact, in order for it to be free, both the doctor and the patient have to purposely ignore any new problems that might have come up since the last physical. Or the doctor has to cheat and do work for which he will not be paid.
None of this should be surprising. You allow the government to stick its hands into everything you do, those hands are going to go places you never expected or would have permitted. Just ask anyone who has had to go through airport security.
The day of reckoning looms: Don’t you dare call it default!
The government you deserve: The arrival of the legal dictator.
The real problem here is not that the state government in Michigan is trying to impose on Detroit an appointed manager with great powers, but that for generations the voters refused to fire the incompetent and corrupt elected officials (all Democrats as is usual in the big urban cities). The result is a city in ruins.
