Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach March 1, 2015 – 9:59 am

Patriotic Pinup

Happy Sunday! Another gorgeous day to be an American. Though, a bit of frozen rain for me. A good day to have off. This pinup is by Romain Hugault, not help necessary.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Right Wing News notes that the Jezebel hit piece on Scott Walker has been retracted
  2. Shot In The Dark wonders about the Cell Phone Neutrality Act Of 1987
  3. The Last Refuge has a Smidgen Alert
  4. The Other McCain notices an unfortunate metaphor alert
  5. The People’s Cube covers the Working Classes Prosperity Project
  6. Independent Sentinel wonders about a “country within a country”
  7. Black And Right notes ending slavery with a selfie
  8. Bookworm Room discusses the Party Of Poop
  9. Capitalism Is Freedom notes how wonderful Canada’s nationalized health system is
  10. Common Cents discusses the ISIS/Shades Of Grey SNL commercial
  11. DaTechGuy notes ISIS executing a gay man and the Left’s collective yawn
  12. Fausta has part 2 of Venezuela criminalizing dissent
  13. Fire Andrea Mitchell notes the Brits used torture to stop an Islamist bomb plot
  14. Flopping Aces hopes you dumbass liberals remember you voted for this
  15. And last, but not least, House Of Eratosthenes covers the cancer of multiculturalism

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page. While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. (BTW, since someone asked, the reason I leave links for the previous week up (or you might see a *) is because they are place holders for later in the day or for next weeks. Easier than rewriting all the time. Also, the listing order has to do with how they are added over time, not how good a post is. I just copy and paste from the previous week, then edit. If you see one of the *’s, go ahead and check out the blog anyhow, see if there is an update. I cannot update with my Android during the day.

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Bummer: By Almost Every Measure, Things Are Looking Good For Polar Bears

By William Teach March 1, 2015 – 8:20 am

Another “OMG, Doom!!!!” talking point/prognostication from the World Of Climatology has bitten the dust

Polar bear population bounces back despite climate change warning

Dr Susan Crockford said: “On almost every measure, things are looking good for polar bears.”

In a report for the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, she said: “Scientists are finding that polar bears are well distributed throughout their range and adapting well to changes in sea ice.

“Health indicators are good and they are benefiting from abundant prey. It really is time for the doom and gloom about polar bears to stop.”

Dr Crockford, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia added: “Polar bears are still a conservation success story. With a global population almost certainly greater than 25,000, we can say for sure that there are more polar bears now than 40 years ago.

“The global estimate is too high to qualify the polar bear as ‘threatened’ with extinction.”

Whelp, there’s that WAG talking point thrown off the cliffs. We’ve been treated to a litany of doom regarding polar bears (which are more than happy to attack and kill humans) and “climate change” for quite some time, but especially since Al Gore included the so-called plight of the polar bear in his idiotic movie “An Inconvenient Truth“. Yet, we keep finding that the reality bears little resemblance to the truth.

Let’s be clear: this doesn’t mean that the Earth is not in a warm period, one in which Mankind plays a small part, mostly through agriculture, landfills, UHI (Urban Heat Island Effect), and land use. It simply means that life adapts. Like it always has. Because the Earth changes. Always has.

BTW

All 50 states of America will see snow this week as the nation is plunged into the coldest month for decades.
For the first time since 2010, meteorologists predict two snow storms barreling through the country in the next seven days will engulf Florida – a usually snow-less state.

It comes as cold weather records continue to fall across the country, with February declared the coldest month in New York for 81 years.

The average temperature in the Big Apple over the last four weeks has been 24F – 11 degrees below normal. New York joins other metropolitan areas such as Chicago and Pittsburgh, which have also experienced their most frigid February in decades.

As the mercury continues to plummet, ice breakers are being deployed by the US Coast Guard to create ferry and shipping lanes along the Hudson River in New York and the Delaware in Philadelphia.

According to The New York Times, it has not been this frigid in New York since February 1934.

And the snow heading towards Boston could break the cities all time record for the season. Obviously, Cultists will blame this on “climate change”. They already are blaming “extreme” winter storms on too much heat. Perhaps we need to change what the definition of insanity is.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Bummer: By Almost Every Measure, Things Are Looking Good For Polar Bears »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 21 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach February 28, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…is the desertification of the planet in places that aren’t flooding, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on feminists and witchcraft.

BTW, who wants to suggest a theme for next week?

Read: If All You See… »

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Fighting Hotcoldwetdry Is Apparently A Moral Issue

By William Teach February 28, 2015 – 10:35 am

Here’s one poll the Warmists should really, really like, since the majority of polls tend to go against the Warmists

(Reuters) A significant majority of Americans say combating climate change is a moral issue that obligates them – and world leaders – to reduce carbon emissions, a Reuters/IPSOS poll has found.

The poll of 2,827 Americans was conducted in February to measure the impact of moral language, including interventions by Pope Francis, on the climate change debate. In recent months, the pope has warned about the moral consequences of failing to act on rising global temperatures, which are expected to disproportionately affect the lives of the world’s poor.

The result of the poll suggests that appeals based on ethics could be key to shifting the debate over climate change in the United States, where those demanding action to reduce carbon emissions and those who resist it are often at loggerheads.

Well, sure, why not? They’ve been “spreading awareness” for 25+ years, and haven’t really gotten beyond “spreading awareness”.

Here’s where it gets really fun (you didn’t think I would post this without a reason, did you?)

Two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) said that world leaders are morally obligated to take action to reduce CO2 emissions. And 72 percent said they were “personally morally obligated” to do what they can in their daily lives to reduce emissions.

Huh. “Personally morally obligated”. So, when will Warmists take action within their own lives? When will they give up their own use of fossil fuels? When will they stop using DVRs, ice makers, hair dryers, washers and dryers, turn their AC up to 80 and their heat down to 55? When will they only buy local, grow their own food, live in tiny homes, and make sure that every device that plugs into an outlet is unplugged when not in use? Obviously, those are all rhetorical, because Warmists talk a good game, but that is all it is in their own world: talk.

Of course, these are the same people who do not see it as morally wrong to demand that other people be taxed heavily with that money being redistributed. To themselves. Nor do they see anything morally wrong with abortion on demand.

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Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 31 Comments | Trackback URL

BCBS NC Posts First Loss In 15 Years, Blames Obamacare

By William Teach February 28, 2015 – 8:07 am

Well, that’s strange, don’t you think? Of course, don’t cry any tears for BCBS or any other insurance companies that willfully, enthusiastically, and wholeheartedly embraced the Affordable Care Act

(Raleigh N&O) Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the state’s largest health insurer, said Friday that it posted its first financial loss in 15 years as a result of insuring high numbers of older and sicker people under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Chapel Hill organization signed up 257,704 people under the federal health care law, which requires insurers to provide coverage regardless of a customer’s health condition.

New enrollees last year swelled Blue Cross’s covered membership to 3.91 million people, and boosted revenue by 25 percent to an all-time high of $8 billion.

But steep medical claims – for hip and knee replacements, heart procedures, specialty drugs and other costs – drove up medical claims from $5 billion in 2013 to $6.4 billion in 2014. Blue Cross also paid $156 million in ACA-related fees, a new cost for the company.

As a result, Blue Cross posted a loss of $50.6 million last year, compared to net income of $92.6 million in 2013. It’s the first annual loss for Blue Cross since 1999.

One thing BCBS notes is that the people they were signing up were older and sicker. The pool of new enrollees who were younger and healthier did not materialize, just like with most Exchanges.

The architects of the ACA foresaw a surge of sicker customers and created an insurance pool to cover losses for affected insurers. Blue Cross plans to seek $120 million from the pool this year and booked $60 million in pre-tax revenue it expects to collect in the coming three years.

I’ll admit, that’s the first time I’ve truly heard of this deep pool. Weren’t the younger and healthier supposed to cover that? Apparently, said architects knew that what they were actually telling the public was a load of mule fritters.

Of course, opponents of the ACA noted that with this “free” and “cheap” health insurance people would use it willy nilly, increasing costs, and shifting the costs to the American taxpayer even more.

Meanwhile, Politico runs an article by Abbe R. Gluck about King v Burwell, which complains that the suit is really about States Rights, which is a bad thing or something

King v. Burwell—the challenge to the Affordable Care Act that the Supreme Court will hear on March 4th—is about more than health care. Court watchers have finally begun to realize that the case is also all about states’ rights. And while the challengers have tried to submerge this issue—because it dramatically undermines their case—its centrality to King has become undeniable.

The challengers maintain that the case is simply about reading plain language. (I have detailed elsewhere why their hyper-literal reading of four words out of context is anything but plain and is not how the Supreme Court usually reads statutes.) But King is about a lot more than this. The case is about federalism—the role of states in our national democracy. The reason the challengers don’t want anyone to realize that is because the very text-oriented justices to whom they are appealing are the exact same justices who have consistently interpreted federal laws to protect states’ rights. And the challengers would read the ACA in the opposite way—as having devastating implications for the states.

Or, it could simply be about one of the most lopsidedly passed bills in U.S. history, which passed without one Republican vote, was not read by those who voted to pass it, and, furthermore, those “four words” being exactly in context of what the architects wanted, to force States to create their own exchanges.

If this was primarily about States Rights, they could file a suit which follows the 10th Amendment, which specifically would stop the ACA, since it is not a power delegated to the Federal Government. Leftists, though, do not like States Rights, because they love the notion of a Central Government dictating everything.

Read: BCBS NC Posts First Loss In 15 Years, Blames Obamacare »

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FCC Commish Ajit Pai Destroys “Net Neutrality” In 3 Easy Points

By William Teach February 28, 2015 – 7:19 am

The idea of an open and free Internet is a wonderful thing. In fact, it is something that the United States has led the world in since the web’s inception. Of course, some folks like to create problems where none exist, and think that it is a Good Idea to give the government huge powers to regulate it, in a misguided belief that the companies who run web shouldn’t be allowed to ever throttle bandwith or even require more payment for bandwith hogs. Of course, at the end of the day, those who believe in net neutrality have shown their cards that this isn’t really about any of that, it’s a typical Progressive belief that the Central Government should have more and more power. And Government will use that power. Progressives will surely want that power used against political enemies. They haven’t really considered that the power could be used against themselves. Anyhow…

(Daily Caller) After casting a futile vote against the FCC’s plan to regulate the Internet as a public utility, Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai delivered a blistering attack on the new rules.

In his dissenting statement, Pai advanced three main objections to the Commission’s “Open Internet Order:”

1. The Internet has grown rapidly, creating untold economic benefits, largely because the government has refrained from interfering with it.

“For twenty years, there’s been a bipartisan consensus in favor of a free and open Internet … [and] the results speak for themselves. Dating back to the Clinton Administration, every FCC Chairman—Republican and Democrat—has let the Internet grow free from utility-style regulation.”

“But today, the FCC abandons those policies. It reclassifies broadband Internet access service as a Title II telecommunications service. It seizes unilateral authority to regulate Internet conduct, to direct where Internet service providers (ISPs) make their investments, and to determine what service plans will be available to the American public.”

Sure, there have been a few glitches and hiccups during that time, most of which were self correcting. This would give the power to Government, made of people with a political agenda, and following the lead of partisan political appointees, legislators, and Executive Office flacks, possibly including the President. Obviously, nothing could ever go wrong with that, right? The next point per the DC is written strangely

2. Title II regulations attempt to solve problems that don’t exist with enough consistency to address with federal government regulation.

“So the FCC is abandoning a 20-year-old, bipartisan framework for keeping the Internet free and open in favor of Great Depression-era legislation designed to regulate Ma Bell. But at least we’re getting something in return, right? Wrong. The Internet is not broken. There is no problem for the government to solve.”

“Nevertheless, the Order ominously claims that ‘[t]hreats to Internet openness remain today.’ It argues that broadband providers ‘hold all the tools necessary to deceive consumers, degrade content, or disfavor the content that they don’t like,’ and it asserts that the FCC continues ‘to hear concerns about other broadband provider practices involving blocking or degrading third-party applications.’”

“The evidence of these continuing threats? There is none; it’s all anecdote, hypothesis, and hysteria. A small ISP in North Carolina allegedly blocked VoIP calls a decade ago. Comcast capped BitTorrent traffic to ease upload congestion eight years ago. Apple introduced Facetime over Wi-Fi first, cellular networks later. Examples this picayune and stale aren’t enough to tell a coherent story about net neutrality. The bogeyman never had it so easy.”

And, as I mentioned once before, BitTorrent is a website that was abetting the distribution of music and movies illegally, per federal copyright law.

3. Title II regulations will lead to new taxes and slower broadband speeds for consumers.

“Literally nothing in this Order will promote competition among ISPs. To the contrary, reclassifying broadband will drive competitors out of business. Monopoly rules designed for the monopoly era will inevitably move us in the direction of a monopoly. If you liked the Ma Bell monopoly in the 20th century, you’ll love Pa Broadband in the 21st.”

“One avenue for higher bills is the new taxes and fees that will be applied to broadband. If you look at your phone bill, you’ll see a ‘Universal Service Fee,’ or something like it. These fees—what most Americans would call taxes—are paid by Americans on their telephone service.”

The FCC’s net neutrality is as much a head-fake as Obamacare. Remember, the original point of Ocare was to make sure that the 30-45 million without health insurance were able to obtain health insurance at a reasonable cost. When the bill was finally passed, it hugely embedded the Central Government in how not just health insurance works, but the health care industry as well.

Other excerpts from his dissenting letter

But if this Order manages to survive judicial review, these will be the consequences: higher broadband prices, slower speeds, less broadband deployment, less innovation, and fewer options for American consumers. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet isn’t the solution to a problem. His plan is the problem.

In short, because this Order imposes intrusive government regulations that won’t work to solve a problem that doesn’t exist using legal authority the FCC doesn’t have. I dissent.

A solution in search of a problem that creates more odious problems

Although the Order plainly regulates rates, the plan takes pains to claim that it is not imposing further “ex ante rate regulation.” Of course, that concedes that the new regulatory regime will involve ex post rate regulation. But even the agency’s suggestion that it today “cannot . . . envision” ex ante rate regulations “in this context” says nothing of what a future Commission—perhaps this very Commission—could envision.

In other words, the FCC was saying “trust us”. Because mission creep never ever happens, right?

Commish Pai spends a lot of time discussing the higher taxes that will be coming to go along with the slower speeds and lack of competition. This is apparently what net neutrality believers feel is a “good idea”. Make sure to read the entire letter.

Oh, and we still do not know what is in the 317 pages, because the FCC hasn’t released it yet. They want the Internet transparent, yet not the orders giving the Central Government all this power.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Obama’s Plan For The Internet Totally Forgets To Include Details

By William Teach February 27, 2015 – 3:35 pm

However, he seems totally psyched to have the Central Government out in place regulations and rules via unelected bureaucrats

(Kuntsevo Dacha) More than any other invention of our time, the Internet has unlocked possibilities we could just barely imagine a generation ago. And here’s a big reason we’ve seen such incredible growth and innovation: Most Internet providers have treated Internet traffic equally. That’s a principle known as “net neutrality” — and it says that an entrepreneur’s fledgling company should have the same chance to succeed as established corporations, and that access to a high school student’s blog shouldn’t be unfairly slowed down to make way for advertisers with more money.

Interestingly, all that was done without the heavy hand of Government,  especially without an un-seen and secretive plan which turns the Web into a 1930’s phone company.

Interestingly, as part of his 4 point sticky note “plan”, he discusses transparency, ironic after a this was all done without any transparency. Oh, and

If carefully designed, these rules should not create any undue burden for ISPs, and can have clear, monitored exceptions for reasonable network management and for specialized services such as dedicated, mission-critical networks serving a hospital. But combined, these rules mean everything for preserving the Internet’s openness.

So, “trust us”. Because government never is bad. You do have to like how there are “exemptions”. Uh huh. And carefully designed, from the same guy who had billions of dollars and still could get a website to work.

And to repeat: everything was fine beforehand. This is a solution in search of a problem.

BTW, to be clear, I’d appose any Republican that backed this obvious power grab.

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Posted in Barry Obama, Web/Tech | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach February 27, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible pool wasting precious water which can never be replaced, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is American Power, with a post on the science being settled.

Read: If All You See… »

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Bubonic Plague Is Like Totally Linked To “Climate Change”

By William Teach February 27, 2015 – 11:08 am

Warmists have been pushing the “climate change will make diseases oh so worse. Doom!” meme hard for the past couple of weeks. No surprise, this crops up almost every year, particularly during the winter. Science 2.0 reprints an article from The Conversation. See if you can guess whats’ missing

Bubonic Plague Linked To Climate Change In Asia

The Black Death struck Europe in 1347, killing 30-50% of the European population in six violent years. 

It wasn’t a one-off epidemic: it signaled the start of the second plague pandemic in Europe that lasted for hundreds of years and only slowly disappeared from the continent after the Great Plague of London in 1665-1666.

These outbreaks were traditionally thought to be caused by rodent reservoirs of infected rats lurking in Europe’s cities, or potentially by rodent reservoirs in the wilderness. But our research, published in the journal PNAS, suggests otherwise.

If the “reservoir” thesis were correct, we would expect plague outbreaks to be associated with local climate fluctuations, through changes in agricultural yields and primary productions in forests, affecting the number of urban and wildlife rodents, resulting in more plague. We found that Europe’s plague outbreaks were indeed associated with climate fluctuations – but in Asia.

The Black Death came to Europe from Asia. Historical records tentatively map it back to outbreaks in 1345 in Astrakhan and Sarai, two trade centers located on the Volga river near the Caspian Sea.

Now, go ahead and read through the rest of the article.

This is the narrative we aimed to substantiate through evidence, but which we ended up challenging. Using tree-ring based climate records from Europe and Asia, we showed that plague reintroductions into European harbors were associated with periods of wet conditions, followed by a drought, across large parts of Central Asia.

OK. Still missing something.

This followed a pattern that we associate with current-day plague outbreaks. What is the implication of such a finding? In terms of our understanding of the past plague pandemics, it provides a different perspective as to how the disease moved across Eurasia, driven by climate events that were and still are frequently occurring.

The implication, as has happened with so many articles about past climate doom, including ones about the Bubonic Plague, is that climate change is Bad and causes lots of problems and look at what is happening now! Doom! What’s not mentioned in most of these articles (such as about the fall of the Roman empire) is that these occurred during a time of cooling. The incredibly deadly Black Death outbreaks, including the one in Asia, occurred during the Little Ice Age, which started around 1300. What these “scientists” are attempting to do is create a link to the Modern Warm Period without providing context and factual data. This is simply scaremongering.

Read: Bubonic Plague Is Like Totally Linked To “Climate Change” »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Warmist: “We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” Regarding Cold And Snow

By William Teach February 27, 2015 – 7:52 am

Yet another cultist tells us that all this cold and snow is because you, dear reader, drove a fossil fueled vehicle. Here’s Ann McFeathers

Climate change is all around

Don’t read this if you are among the few who have not been affected by this winter’s wild and wicked weather. You wouldn’t understand.

I am in my kitchen surrounded by pots and pans collecting water from leaks from the relatively new roof I recently paid off. The water is a disgusting shade of brown, of course, and can’t even be used for any good purpose.

But I am extremely grateful the roof itself has not caved in as so many have done in the Northeast.

I can’t drive my car to the grocery store because after I painstakingly dug it out of the snow, the county snowplow finally showed up and pushed the snow from the entire street in front of my carport. AAA cheerfully agrees it may be May before I drive that baby again.

One would think that this might actually give a Warmist pause in thinking about what the causes of the current warm period are. Nope.

Once again, I am mystified by climate change deniers, most of whom are rich or are paid vast sums to serve in Congress or are running for president. Some of them are so incredibly dense they say such things as, duh, there can’t be global warming when it’s so cold outside. Thus they tout their complete ignorance that climate change means more extreme weather patterns and long-term changes that will devastate huge populations.

Interesting. I’m not rich, nor am I paid vast sums to serve in Congress or run for president. In fact, most Skeptics are simply average folks who refuse to buy the line that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible for the current warm period. Some skeptics even hold the view that Mankind is responsible for 51%+ of the current warming. However, they also do not think it reason for scream doom and gloom, pass restrictive laws, rules, and regulations which artificially raise our cost of living and give government more power over our lives. Many understand that a warm period is much better for human development than a cool one. Anyhow, here we go

Climate change doesn’t just mean we’re seeing record warm temperatures year after year. It also means breadbaskets will become arid deserts, coastal towns will flood, tornadoes and hurricanes and tsunamis will become more intense and dangerous.

Interesting. Tornadoes and hurricanes have neither become more intense, nor widespread. Tsunamis? Seriously? The weather mostly has nothing to do with tsunamis. And, of course, the obvious inference, based on the opening paragraphs, is that “climate change” is causing snow and cold

This ongoing winter has been brutal, but as we shovel, mop and repair, a nagging thought occurs: We ain’t seen nuthin yet.

Nothing says “cult!” like blaming brutal snow and cold on heat trapping gases.

BTW, here’s global warming

(CBS Boston) ..a photographer on Nantucket found something most of us have never seen – nearly frozen waves.

Jonathan Nimerfroh was walking along a beach on the island recently when he saw these waves rolling in like slush.

The waves were semi-frozen because there was so much ice inside them.

I blame you for using heat in your big McMansion.

Read: Warmist: “We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” Regarding Cold And Snow »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 15 Comments | Trackback URL
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