• Steyn: The Ghosts Of November
  
• Day Before Launch, ACA Website Couldn't Handle 500 Users
  
• Obamacare Website Chief Warned Of Meltdown
  
• Scott Walker, How To Win The Obama-Walker Voters
  
• WH Pushes Next Year's Enrollment Period Deadline Back A Month, After The Elections
  
• Dem Calls For More Rule Changes In The Senate
  
• Campaign Aids Shocked At Obamacare Rate Costs
  
• JFK Assassinations Continued Importance
  
• For Obamacare Architects, Problems Are Features, Not Bugs
  
• Boehner Has A Great Plan For Pulling Obama's Ass Out Of The Fire
  
• Obama Honors JFK By Noting His Signing Of The Equal Pay Act
  
• Repeal Will Never Happen As Long As Obama Is In Office
  
• Bio-Engineer: We'll Print A Human Heart In A Decade
  
• Time To Pull The Plug On MSNBC?
  
• VDH: Obamacare Speak
  
• Insurance Commissioners Raise Concerns Of Healthcare Fix With Obama
  
• Evil, Imperialist US Military Saving Tens Of Thousands Of Lives In the Philippines
  
• Taranto: War On What?
  
• Blame Rich, Overeducated Elites As Our Society Frays
  
• Scientists Witness Massive Gamma Ray Burst
  
• The New Satire Of Deception
  
• Toledo Looking To Ban Pet Shop Stores
  

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:14 AM | Comments (352)
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Happy Friday!

Politico: filibuster change could expand field of future nominees. Yeah, that's kinda the problem. No one in their right minds wants the judiciary to become as partisan as the legislative and executive branches have become.

The trial for the Aurora, Colorado shooter will be delayed again. It was supposed to start in February. Prosecutors had sought additional psychiatric evaluation, suggesting that the first evaluations found him to be insane.

Gov. Christie takes the reins of the RGA. And there was a surprise appearance.

Alright, ya'll have a good weekend. Also, I'll be gone all next week, so be good to Andy.

[ RSS]

[iTunes]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:54 AM | Comments (337)
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The Giveaway that Global Warmening is a Scam

People will bullshit with their mouth but almost never with their own money.

"The high cost of coastal homes in New York and Los Angeles is on its own a market signal that the alleged threat of global warming is well overdone. Even worse for those who buy into the theory of global warming that says a planetary crack-up is inevitable absent a substantial human response, is that Malibu, Manhattan and the Hamptons are filled with the very people who, when asked if they believe in the global warming theory, would most likely say yes. Ok, so Ted Danson owns in Martha's Vineyard, noted environmental activist Laurie David does too, and then Al Gore is known to have purchased a coastal palazzo in Montecito, CA. What this tells us is that even global warming's most famous advocates don't believe very deeply in their own activism. To believe the warmists we're sitting idle as Rome supposedly burns, but as evidenced by the popularity of coastal property among warmists and non-warmists alike, the market says the 'science' predicting catastrophe is utter nonsense."

Slate: The Global Warming Pause Proves That Anti-Global Warming Efforts Work

At this point AGW is simply non-falsifiable: There is literally no experiment or outcome you can predict that climate change believers will accept as proof it's false. Which tells you it's really a matter of religious faith instead of science.

Meanwhile the Global Warming global bandwagon seems to be unraveling: UN climate talks fall apart as 132 countries storm out

Mostly because wealthy countries aren't willing to hand over money to the poor countries for all the non-occurring global warming. I particularly like how the Australian government who have publicly repudiated AGW hysteria are treating the shakedown climate talks:

Australian diplomats have also thrown a wrench into the negotiations, as poor countries and activists accused them of not taking the talks seriously. The country did not even send high-ranking officials to the UN summit, saying that they would be busy repealing the country's contentious carbon tax.

"They wore T-shirts and gorged on snacks throughout the negotiation. That gives some indication of the manner they are behaving in," said a spokeswoman for the Climate Action Network.

Great Leftist Rebuttals: "The idea that young people won't go on to the exchanges is very gendered."

Huh?

Also Racist: Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Because Latinos and other immigrants are simply unable to comprehend the concept of smearing stuff on sliced bread and this kind of White Man magic scares and oppresses them.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:05 PM | Comments (568)
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The feel good story of the day...

The lamentations of big government supporters having to deal with the consequences of their choices just like the little people do.

In a shock to the system, the older staff in my office (folks over 59) have now found out their personal health insurance costs (even with the government contribution) have gone up 3-4 times what they were paying before,” Minh Ta, chief of staff to Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), wrote to fellow Democratic chiefs of staff in an email message obtained by POLITICO. “Simply unacceptable.”

In the email, Ta noted that older congressional staffs may leave their jobs because of the change to their health insurance.

Ok, bye-bye then. Good luck finding a new job.

FTR-Congresswoman Moore voted for the ACA and opposed the Upton measure to let people keep their plans.

Below the fold my reaction to Moore, Ta and all the Democrats who are getting bit on the ass by their own policy. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 02:43 PM | Comments (276)
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They claim, again, that the dark rightwing chatter of Dallas '63 was somehow a major influence on the communist and Soviet defector Lee Harvey Oswald.

Watch how the New York Times argues not that an important constituency of the Democratic Party -- socialists and the socialist-curious left -- must reflect upon its responsibility for Kennedy's murder, but that the right must.

[T]he tension between past and present has unleashed a wave of citywide self-reflection a half-century later in a distinctly American place that is part Dallas Cowboys, part Texas excess and part urban melting pot, where the public school students come from homes where 70 languages are spoken. Painful, embarrassing memories of the angry anti-Washington culture that flourished here 50 years ago — and now seems a permanent part of the national mood — have resurfaced, confronting Dallasites daily.

An angry anti-Washington culture killed Kennedy?

Well, indeed, communists were anti-Washington (before Washington became a Socialist Beacon) and were usually pretty angry.

But that's not what they mean, is it?

Blocks from Dealey Plaza, the windows of restaurants and the lobbies of hotels are plastered with posters reading “Love” — a nonprofit group’s campaign, using artwork by schoolchildren and others, to counter the City of Hate label given Dallas after the assassination. As the city prepares for the biggest event it has ever held to mark the assassination on Friday — led by Mayor Michael S. Rawlings, a committee of civic leaders raised about $3 million in private donations for the ceremony — the focus has been on the city’s legacy as much as Kennedy’s.

“I’ve learned a lot about my city through this,” Mr. Rawlings said. “The world is peering into Dallas and saying, What’s that place all about right now, 50 years later? We’ve grown a lot, and we’ve changed a lot. The main story about Dallas is it took that punch and turned that tragedy into motivation to go to the next level.”

In the early 1960s, a small but vocal subset of the Dallas power structure turned the political climate toxic, inciting a right-wing hysteria that led to attacks on visiting public figures. In the years and months before Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon B. Johnson; his wife, Lady Bird; and Adlai E. Stevenson, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, were jostled and spat upon in Dallas by angry mobs. In sermons, rallies, newspapers and radio broadcasts, the cityÂ’s richest oil baron, a Republican congressman, a Baptist pastor and others, including the local John Birch Society, filled Dallas with an angry McCarthyesque paranoia.

The immediate reaction of many in Dallas to the news that Kennedy had been shot was not only shock but also a sickening sense of recognition. Moments after hearing about the shooting, the wife of the Methodist bishop told Tom J. Simmons, an editor at The Dallas Morning News, “You might have known it would be Dallas.”

Uh, yes, that might have been the initial erroneous reaction from the left, who is always sure that every evil is perpetrated by a rightwinger, but what has their erroneous first reaction to do with what actually happened?

Here's where they link up the rightwing H8 to Oswald:

...

Lee Harvey Oswald was a Marxist and not a product of right-wing Dallas. But because the anti-Kennedy tenor came not so much from radical outcasts but from parts of mainstream Dallas, some say the anger seemed to come with the cityÂ’s informal blessing.

This is precisely what they did with Palin and Jared Loughner-- they attempt to claim that a man who is obviously not influenced by Palin at all is somehow indirectly influenced by "anti-government" chatter, and then he kills people.

So, you know: You're not permitted to be anti-government. An entire strain of American politics, sometimes dominant, always present, is thus claimed by the New York Times to be tantamount to murder, and hence forbidden.

How convenient for them.

Posted by: Ace at 04:44 PM | Comments (464)
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Obama largely denies access to media photographers, due to his typical Nixonian paranoid control-freak obsession with his image.

That might surprise you -- as it well may surprise the press -- given the fact that the press chooses to depict Obama, when left to its own devices, as an angel descended to earth or actual god among us.

Nevertheless, Obama was apparently concerned that the 75% of the press photographers attempting to deify him through carefully-angled Halo Photography might be somewhat undermined by the 25% who just took pictures of him, depicting him as a man, possibly in unflattering ways. And he couldn't abide that.

Ron Fournier commits some journalism and takes Obama to task for running a propaganda machine on the taxpayers' dime. And yes, he's that forward in his criticism.

New York Times photographer Doug Mills strode into Jay Carney's office Oct. 29 with a pile of pictures taken exclusively by President Obama's official photographer at events the White House press corps was forbidden to cover. "This one," Mills said, sliding one picture after another off his stack and onto the press secretary's desk. "This one, too – and this one and this one and … ."

The red-faced photographer, joined by colleagues on the White House Correspondents' Association board, finished his 10-minute presentation with a flourish that made Carney, a former Moscow correspondent for Time, wince.

"You guys," Mills said, "are just like Tass."

Comparing the White House to the Russian news agency is a hyperbole, of course, but less so with each new administration. Obama's image-makers are taking advantage of new technologies that democratized the media, subverting independent news organizations that hold the president accountable. A generation ago, a few mainstream media organizations held a monopoly on public information about the White House. Today, the White House itself is behaving monopolistic.

...

Unlike media photographers, official White House photographers are paid by taxpayers and report to the president. Their job is to make Obama look good. They are propagandists – in the purest sense of the word.

...

Journalists understand that the president's family and national security events must be off-limits at times. Journalists also don't object to the White House using social media; those are platforms as legitimate as televisions and print. The problem is that the Obama White House is simultaneously restricting access of independent media while flooding the public with state-run media.

...

Here are just a few examples of how the White House uses your taxes to manipulate Obama's image.

Do read the whole thing. One of Obama's tricks is to exclude the press from a public gathering by claiming it's a "private" meeting. But his photo-propagandists are on hand, and they quickly push the pictures of the "private" meeting or rally out to the world.

In what sense is that "private"?

It's not. It is another case of Obama, get this, lying.

Fournier notes that a lot of these pictures are of Obama's rapturous supporters, not Obama himself. Does that make sense if the photographers are being paid by the taxpayer to document the president?

So why do they take and distribute so many photos like this – ones with no sign of the president? Hint: The crowds are always big, happy and adoring of Obama. All on your dime.

A letter has been sent to Jay Carney calling for an end to Obama's monopolistic exclusion of press photographers in favor of his own taxpayer-paid glamor propagandists. It's surprisingly tough as well.

For decades, American news photographers have captured iconic moments in and around the White House....

[Prior] presidents have recognized that photographic access by the public's press to their leader is essential to Americans' trust in the workings of government.

But not this president. The administration of President Obama is routinely denying the right of independent journalists to photograph or videotape the president while he is performing official duties. Instead, the White House is issuing visual press releases - handout pictures taken by official government photographers - and expecting news outlets to publish those.

These are not instances where national security is at stake, but rather, presidential activities of a fundamentally public nature....

In each case, the White House deemed the events "private," but then sent its own photographs to the press and directly to the public over social media. This is, we are sure you will agree, unacceptable practice, raising both constitutional and ethical concerns. These photographs are, in essence, government propaganda tailored to serve the president's interests and not the public's.

...

Pretty tough, huh?

Well... they're about to get tough on themselves. You may be a little surprised at that. I sure am.

In the meantime, we must accept that we, the press, have been enablers. We urge those of you in news organizations to immediately refrain from publishing any of the photographs or videos released by the White House, just as you would refuse to run verbatim a press release from them. We urge those of you in journalism education to highlight this issue in your classrooms. And we urge those with editorial pages to educate and activate the public on this important issue.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/pictures-video/obama-s-image-machine-monopolistic-propaganda-funded-by-you-20131121

Posted by: Ace at 03:33 PM | Comments (230)
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Per @verumserum's article at Breitbart, Obama is hoping for Obamacare enrollees to make up 38% of the total, because young enrollees will pay more in premiums than they are expected to take out of the system.

The young and healthy are thus the keys to subsidizing the whole Risky Scheme.

And in "success story" California?

The young, 18-34, only make up 23% of the pool.

That's not good.

Plus, the enrollees skew pretty old:

The report released Thursday by Covered California, which operates the online exchange, shows that 56 percent of the 30,830 people who had enrolled in plans by Oct. 31 were in the 45- to 64-year-old category.

Furthermore: We don't know if the few young people enrolling are young and healthy. We merely know they're young. If they're young and unhealthy, then they don't subsidize anything at all -- then they're net takers out of the system, and they will speed it towards fiscal meltdown.

It seems likely to me that the young people singing up for Obamacare skew towards the unhealthy side of things.

So it seems likely that Obamacare is not only not signing up enough young people, but among the young people it is signing up, it's not signing up nearly enough of the right kind of young people -- healthy ones, those who will subsidize everyone else.

Oh and one more thing: Any young person getting a large subsidy obviously isn't subsidizing anyone else. So what Obamacare really needs is enrollees who are

1, young,

2, healthy,

and 3, making enough money to pay almost full freight.

So far we know they're not getting enough young people, period. I doubt they're doing much better on points 2 and 3.

Thanks to @johnekdahl.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (281)
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I couldn't be happier for them. No seriously. I cry when I'm happy. I curl up in the shower like Glenn Close and just sob away. That's how you can tell I'm really pleased.

Posted by: Ace at 12:57 PM | Comments (425)
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Tritium is a key component of current US nuclear weapon designs. Having a half life in the ~12 year range, tritium decays and "goes bad" pretty quick needing constant replacement to keep devices fully operational. We can produce enough for the next couple of years, but then the necessary tritium supply may become compromised.

OAS-L-14-01 November 2013

...The Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement and the license amendment request it supports are critical to meet future tritium demands, which are expected to exceed Nuclear Regulatory Commission permitted amounts by October 2015. To increase the current reactor safety limits by January 2015, NNSA had established a management challenge to complete the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. If the license amendment is not approved by October 2015, TVA will be forced to produce less tritium than required by current NNSA plans. If the resulting shortfall cannot be recovered in future reactor cycles it may become necessary for TVA to use an additional reactor, which would be very costly to NNSA. NNSA estimated that it would take 4 years and a minimum of $20 million dollars to prepare an additional reactor to meet its tritium production requirements....

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 11:32 AM | Comments (183)
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There are some facts here which suggest this case will be politically troublesome.

First: These women were liberated October 25th. Why are we only hearing about this now? I suspect socio-political trouble is behind the delay.

Second: Apparently one of the "slaves" called an organization called Freedom Charity to help her after seeing a British program about the group's efforts to save the victims of forced marriage.

Third: This Mirror article is vague and short of specifics about the perpetrators. Almost as if neither the police nor media want to report politically-nettlesome facts about the kidnappers/enslavers.

So my suspicion is that this case might involve Islamists. We all by now know what the media and police are usually concealing when they are cagey about a perpetrator.

I'm having trouble thinking of any other reason that explains why these guys' pictures aren't on the cover of ever British tabloid with the huge "MONSTERS!" headline. I'm having trouble thinking of any other reason the cops didn't perp-walk them for the press.

Three women ‘slaves’ have been rescued after more than 30 years - including one who had NEVER had contact with the outside world.

Officers arrested a man and a woman, both aged 67, this morning after investigations sparked by a call to a charity from one of the women.

All three - described as "highly traumatised" - were taken from a house in Lambeth, south London, to a place of safety several weeks ago.

The three women are a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old British woman.

...

The 30-year-old British woman had allegedly never had contact with the outside world, the Metropolitan Police said.

It is not yet known whether she was born in the house but she is understood to have been in servitude her entire life, they said.

The three victims are not believed to be related to one another.

...

“We have established that all three women were held in this situation for at least 30 years. They did have some controlled freedom.

“The human trafficking unit of the Metropolitan police deals with many cases of servitude and forced labour.

"We have seen some cases where people have been held for up to 10 years, but we have never seen anything of this magnitude before.”

Obviously the police know the slavers' names. And yet I don't see mention of them.

Although I once admired England, I find it extremely creepy that the State exerts such power to hide basic facts from the public, and that their control over the media is apparently sufficient that the media will observe their demand for a gag order.

Update: The Mirror is updating the story on a blog-type feed as information comes out.

At the 4:00 PM (UK time) update:

A gang who trafficked a vulnerable young woman into the UK from Slovakia where she was treated as a "modern-day slave", beaten and repeatedly raped were jailed for a total of more than 30 years last month.

The "unsophisticated" 20-year-old was kidnapped from her rural home and put on a coach where she believed she was heading for the Czech Republic to find work, a court heard.

Instead, she was taken to London and then on to Bradford, West Yorkshire, where she was kept prisoner for weeks by fellow Slovakian Imrich Bodor, 45, before he passed her on to Pakistani asylum seeker Abdul Sabool Shinwary.

Shinwary, 38, also from Bradford, was a known fixer of sham marriages between Asians and Eastern Europeans, Preston Crown Court was told.

He sold her "like cattle" as a prospective bride to Azam Khan, 34, who took her to live above his uncle and aunt's shop in Burnley, Lancashire.

Well, that's horrible. It seems to confirm my suspicions. The gang abducting these women seem to have been Slovakian. (Which doesn't exclude the possibility they are Muslim Slovakian.)

Either way, it does appear that they were then sold to Islamic men.

Thanks to weft-cut loop.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (358)
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