Open thread for Sunday, April 27th: City of Delusion
Here is the open thread for Sunday, April 27th; please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
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This week’s musical selection is ‘City of Delusion’ by the band Muse.
Stay away from me
Build a fortress
And shield your beliefs
Touch the divine
As we fall in line
Can I believe
When I don’t trust
All your theories
Turn to dust
I choose to hide
From the all seeing eye
You’ll not rest
Settle for less
Until you guzzle
And squander what’s left
Do not deny
That you live and let die
Polar bears threatened by ice which is too thick!
We have been told for years about the polar bears and how their very existence has been threatened by global warming and melting ice caps. Well, according to this article the polar bears in Alaska are indeed threatened by the ice…..because the ice is too thick!
Five meters of ice– about 16 feet thick – is threatening the survival of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea region along Alaska’s Arctic coast, according to Dr. Susan J. Crockford, an evolutionary biologist in British Columbia who has studied polar bears for most of her 35-year career.
That’s because the thick ice ridges could prevent ringed seals, the bears’ major prey, from creating breathing holes they need to survive in the frigid waters, Crockford told CNSNews.com
Remember this story about the climate scientists who traveled to the Antarctic to prove the ice was melting only to get stuck in the non-existent ice? Sure you do, who could forget it? A different region of the world yet we seem to be seeing a trend with the ice, don’t we?
Karl Rove claims Harry Reid is trying to pick GOP candidates
Karl Rove has published a new article, which can be read here, in which he claims that Harry Reid and the Democrats are trying to pick GOP candidates in various races across the country in order to assure the weakest candidate wins the nomination so they can be more easily defeated in November.
Here is part of what he wrote:
To understand how Democrats plan to hold the Senate, consider President Obama’s claim about the Affordable Care Act: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Why did he so often say something that wasn’t true?
In 2009 and early 2010, he made this false promise to pass the Affordable Care Act. It’s unlikely every congressional Democrat would have voted for it if their constituents knew the truth. And from March 2010 through November 2012, he said it to get re-elected. If voters knew what was coming, more Democrats would have lost, and perhaps even the president himself.
The lesson many Democrats seem to have taken away is that the benefits of misleading voters outweigh the downsides. At least that view seems to be guiding Democrats in the battle for the Senate, especially the work of Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Senate Majority PAC.
He goes on to list a few examples of how Harry Reid’s Super PAC has put money into GOP races and how this led to weaker candidates being put forth, and he has a legitimate point. But what is his solution?
The NRA calls for a universal concealed carry permit
Now that concealed carry is permitted in all 50 states the NRA is calling for what would amount to a universal concealed carry permit which would make it easier for a lawful gun owner to carry his or her weapons from state to state.
Here is more:
With concealed weapons now legal in all 50 states, the National Rifle Association’s focus at this week’s annual meeting is less about enacting additional state protections than on making sure the permits already issued still apply when the gun owners travel across the country.
The nation’s largest gun-rights group, which officially opens its meeting of about 70,000 people Friday in Indianapolis, wants Congress to require that concealed weapons permits issued in one state be recognized everywhere, even when the local requirements differ. Advocates say the effort would eliminate a patchwork of state-specific regulations that lead to carriers unwittingly violating the law when traveling.
While there has been much talk about the civil war which is currently brewing in the Republican party Barack Obama seems to be quietly losing influence within his own party–to an extent.
Last week Barack Obama drew the ire of many in the Democratic party when he punted on the Keystone Pipeline. On top of that many Democrats in red-leaning states are distancing themselves from Obamacare despite his pleas for them to embrace it, and this week he is in Asia promoting a trade policy which is dead on arrival in the Congress because the Democrats (and the unions) are united with the Republicans in opposition.
Here is more:
ABC (yes ABC) did a report on the IRS and in this story we learned that the IRS paid out $1,000,000 in bonuses to employees who are late on their taxes, and as many as 1,000 tax delinquent IRS employees received extra time off. (Maybe they should have used that extra time to do their taxes.)
The report also claims that 69 employees received pay raises but was not clear on whether the people in question here are late on their taxes.
Here is the report:
How did that old American Express slogan go? Oh yeah: membership has its privileges. Perhaps the IRS should pay as much attention to the people they have working for them as they do to the conservative groups they were targeting. Or perhaps this was a reward for a job well done…..
Colorado healthcare exchange wants to charge a fee on all healthcare plans to help pay for Obamacare
The Colorado healthcare exchange is facing financial difficulties so they have devised a new scheme in order to help keep it solvent–they want to add a fee to all healthcare plans in the state.
Colorado’s latest effort to ensure its state-run health care exchange is self-sufficient involves a $13 million fee collected from all Coloradans with health insurance, regardless of whether they bought their policies through Obamacare.
Many of the people who have signed up for insurance through the Obamacare exchanges are people who previously had healthcare but lost it due to the new regulations, and in many cases these people are paying higher premiums, but now if this plan goes through they will be paying even more.
But even if you live in Colorado and you were one of the lucky ones who still have insurance and did not have to sign up for Obamacare you are probably paying higher premiums and you will also be required to pay this fee in order to help pay for those who lost their insurance due to the healthcare reform law in the first place.
But I thought Obamacare was supposed to save people an average of $2,500 and make healthcare more affordable?
Melissa Harris-Perry says Democrats should tell people who have lost their healthcare due to Obamacare: “just deal with that”
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry is upset that the Democrats are not taking Barack Obama’s advice and embracing Obamacare before the 2014 election. She claims this shows that the Democratic party has no swagger and she wants to see them go on the offensive.
After claiming that Obamacare has provided millions of people with insurance (while forgetting to mention many of these people had insurance before Obamacare but it was canceled) she lamented the fact that more Democrats do not seem to be promoting Barack Obama’s signature legislation.
Here is part of what she had to say:
Massachusetts Democratic Representative Stephen Lynch, who is actually perhaps the lone reasonable Democrat in a state run my the ultra-left, had some interesting comments on Obamacare.
Here is part of what he had to say:
“We will lose seats in the House,” said Lynch. “And I think we may lose the Senate. I think that’s a possibility if things continue to go the way they have been… primarily because of health care.”
Lynch added, “There’s all these taxes and fees that are the tough medicine, that up to now they haven’t implemented. I don’t know who’s going to do that. Maybe… they expect the next administration is going to put these penalties in place. I think that’s the time it’s going to hit the fan.”
While Barack Obama is trying to convince Democrats to be proud of Obamacare this is one Democrat who apparently is not falling for the regime’s line, in fact he seems to be doing the opposite.
He actually admitted what many on the right have been saying for quite some time and that is the fact that the most painful aspects of this law have been delayed until after the election when Barack Obama will not have to worry about being the person who implements all these tax increases, even though he is responsible for them.
As for his prediction: we can only hope he is right.
A new government funded study on biofuels has reached the conclusion that biofuels are actually worse for the environment than gasoline.
Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration’s conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.
A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.
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