Moral weaklings and cowards are always tempted by tyranny.

[I]ncreasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress. Branding its unilateral efforts “We Can’t Wait,” a slogan that aides said Mr. Obama coined at that strategy meeting, the White House has rolled out dozens of new policies — on creating jobs for veterans, preventing drug shortages, raising fuel economy standards, curbing domestic violence and more.

Each time, Mr. Obama has emphasized the fact that he is bypassing lawmakers. When he announced a cut in refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages last month, for example, he said: “If Congress refuses to act, I’ve said that I’ll continue to do everything in my power to act without them.”

Aides say many more such moves are coming. Not just a short-term shift in governing style and a re-election strategy, Mr. ObamaÂ’s increasingly assertive use of executive action could foreshadow pitched battles over the separation of powers in his second term, should he win and Republicans consolidate their power in Congress.

The Sun President.

Even The Bureaucracy Is Squealing, But The Times Utters Not a Squeak: Obama created, per his own unlimited executive power, an $8.3 slush fund to mitigate the effect of his passed-by-law cuts to Medicare Advantage. These cuts would be unpopular, and Obama wants to delay the pain -- and thus the electoral hit -- until after the election.

But now the General Accounting Office says this slush fund needs to be canceled.

In a rebuke to the Obama administration, government auditors are calling for the cancellation of an $8 billion Medicare program that congressional Republicans have criticized as a political ploy.

...

GAO, the investigative agency of Congress, did not address GOP allegations that the bonuses are politically motivated. But, its report found the program highly unusual. It “dwarfs” all other Medicare pilots undertaken in nearly 20 years, the GAO said.

...

Available through 2014, the bonuses will soften much of the initial impact of the Medicare Advantage cuts, acting like a temporary reprieve.

This year, for example, the bonus program offset more than two-thirds of the cuts in the health care law. Indeed, Medicare Advantage enrollment is up by 10 percent and premiums have gone down on average.

But GAO questioned whether the bonus program will achieve its goal of finding better incentives to promote quality. “The design of the demonstration precludes a credible evaluation of its effectiveness in achieving (the administration’s) stated research goal.”

...

“The Obama administration seems to be using a technicality to sidestep Congress and write itself a blank check to spend more money for political purposes leading into this year’s elections,” Hatch said in a statement.

“The White House does not have the authority to green-light spending on whatever program it wants,” he added. “This report is just the beginning — I will be demanding answers.”

So, although Obama cast this unconstitutionally-commanded slush fund as for purposes of research, the GAO determined it had no research potential, and furthermore "dwarfed" all previous research pilot programs.

So it wasn't for research -- it was for votes.

And Obama claimed the power to order it on his own authority.

Posted by: Ace at 06:29 AM | Comments (185)
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Andy posted this, and it's been everywhere on the internet.

On the off-chance you've missed it, or not emailed it to someone in, say, Wisconsin, here it is again. more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:05 AM | Comments (68)
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Happy Frozen Monday. It's darn cold out today.

Just one item from me this morning: the Obama Admin is vowing to continue a Medicare "bonus" program that the GAO is saying is just a costly pay-off, with no real benefit.

Remember how Republicans were hitting Obama for cutting Medicare as part of the overall Obamacare package? He didn't like that (the truth hurts); so he claimed that he had the authority to simply give $8 billion in "bonus" payments to certain Medicare providers. It wasn't political, he claimed; just a means of incentivising plans to cut costs.

You read that right. Giving bonuses to nearly all plans somehow causes them to cut costs. Like magic.

The administration is defending the program, saying that without the bonuses many plans wouldn't have an incentive to improve quality.

Does. Not. Compute. Liberals really are the dumbest people on the Earth.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:48 AM | Comments (275)
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Happy Happy Earth Day 2012 all. Hope your Gaia bonfire went well.

Always Room For Improvement

It may be high tech military devices that get all the media attention but never forget that there is always room for improvement in even the most mundane of military equipment.

Muzzle breaks:

The new accessory is a muzzle brake. These devices tend to be about 10 cm (4 inches) long and weigh 110-140 gm (4-6 ounces). They screw onto the front of the barrel and keep the barrel more stable after each shot reducing recoil, as well as flash. ...The latest feature is to have threads in the small round holes in the muzzle brake, where the gas from the bullet propellant can disperse. The new EFFIN muzzle brakes allow you to screw plugs into some of these holes to compensate for the tendency of your rifle to jerk a bit to one side. This keeps you steadier for the next shot which, in combat, is often needed immediately.

Dust-proof magazines:

A lower tech, but equally useful item, is the dust-proof magazine. ...Commercial firms have come out with several generations of magazines that try to seal the magazine well to keep the talcum powder-like crud out of the rifle. One of the most effective of these is the Advanced Reliability Combat magazine that includes a soft gasket that creates a dust-proof seal when the magazine is inserted in an M-4, or similar weapon (like the SOCOM SCAR). ...Magazines of this type are also available with another simple, but life-saving, innovation: a strip of see-through plastic running the length of the magazine, showing how many bullets you have left.

A better way to carry a wounded soldier:

Some Israeli commandos came up with a simple method for carrying a wounded man out of difficult situations (inside buildings or over rough terrain). Basically it's a series of straps that allows one man to carry the casualty on his back, like a backpack. The carrier has both hands free, to handle a weapon or help in getting down stairs or over obstacles. The device is now sold (for $80) as the IPC (Injured Personnel Carrier). Another example of how necessity is the mother of invention.

Note that all of these cost less than $100.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:20 PM | Comments (499)
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The first one here.

Imagine what the SCOAMF would do with a second term.

Posted by: Slublog at 03:26 PM | Comments (228)
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Food for thought on the real meaning of "Earth Day" appears below the fold.

There's also a good piece over at RedState positing that the lack of CAGW subtext in Discovery Channel's Frozen Planet (which is excellent and on the tv as I type this) is a sign that the issue has finally jumped the shark. I have my doubts.

Open thread in the comments.
more...

Posted by: andy at 12:36 PM | Comments (370)
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Greetings Team! My Name is Zakn and after much hue and cry by Moron(and Ette!) Nation, We are going to do some posting about a very important subject: Video Games.

Before I lose anyone I want to plug the Ace Of Spades HQ Steam group. If you make/have a better Av for it send it to me! More on Steam later

The other thing I would like to plug before we delve into things too deeply. Diablo 3 Open Beta starts this weekend! more...

Posted by: Gang of Gaming Morons! at 09:15 AM | Comments (390)
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Three stars. Can't give it three and a half stars because it's not very ambitious -- it's just a fun sports drama/comedy. It echoes Slap Shot, but it's more like Rudy, and definitely more like Rocky, than it is to Slap Shot.

Graphic Violence Warning: Re-watching, I realize I didn't emphasize enough that the violence becomes hard-R graphic violence towards the end.

Seann William Scott (reviewer bias: I am biased in his favor; I like this actor a lot) plays a bouncer named Doug Glatt, "stupid" by his own self-description, in a depressed blue collar town in Massachusetts called Orangetown. (Sort of like the depressed blue collar town in the north, somewhere, called Charlestown in Slap Shot.)

Attending a very minor league game, an opponent-team player charges into the stands to beat up his friend, who's been heckling him. Doug intervenes, beating the hell out of the hockey player, becoming a YouTube sensation. The coach calls him up and recruits him to be their Goon. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:11 AM | Comments (70)
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Good morning, morons and moronettes.

I discovered a neat little book this week, ]The Benefit of Christ Crucified by an Italian guy named Don Benedetto who lived back in the 16th century. I have not been able to find out much about him other than he was part of the Italian Reformation. Huh. Who knew there was a Reformation in Italy? But there was, even though it was short-lived.

There was a Spanish Reformation, too, but as we all know, no-one expected it.

Yeah.

Anyway, TBOCC is a short book on the "ABCs" of Christian faith. It only 50 pages on my Nook. I like it because as I get older, I find that I constantly need to get reacquainted with the basics. The book was apparently very popular when it first came out, to the tune of tens of thousands of published copies. You can download it in various eBook formats at this link, about halfway down the page. I think it is available in .pdf or .txt format elsewhere.

Here are some books by morons who actually know how to write:

No Justice, But Everyone Got Paid looks interesting, and also because we need more novels written about psychotic lawyers.

Wings Over The Pacific is historical fiction, set in the Pacific Theater of WWII. The blurb at the link is far better than anything I could write about it.

As always, book thread tips may be sent to aoshqbookthread@gmail.com

So what has everyone else been reading this week? Something good, I hope.

Update: Is the AoSHQ main page loading slow for any of you? I've noticed this just in the last few days that it takes quite a long time in Firefox to get to the point where I can scroll up or down.

Update2:Seems to load OK on IE

Posted by: Code Red at 07:00 AM | Comments (112)
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Let the day's open threads commence!

I really wish the old guy in the video below the fold was still with us. We need him as much or more now than we did in the 80s, when his ideas were last put in practice to beat back the statists.

Oh, and happy earth day. I'll be outside burning tires.

UPDATE: Our own Dri's Challenger Hemi is now featured in Iowahawk's 7th Annual Earth Week Cruise-In. more...

Posted by: andy at 03:56 AM | Comments (263)
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