Obama Targets Sexual Assault On Campus, Tells Base To Stop It

By William Teach January 22, 2014 – 4:12 pm

After watching Obama these past 5 years, color me skeptical that this is anything other than some sort of self-serving political move

(The Hill) President Obama will create a new task force to examine how to better prevent sexual assault on college campuses, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

The president is giving the panel three months to gather specific recommendations for schools to better prevent and respond to an epidemic of campus sexual assaults, according to the wire service. Obama is also asking the task force to provide recommendations on how the federal government can track and promote how well individual schools are responding to the issue, and punish universities that fail to confront the issue.

Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Education Secretary Arnie Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius will join President Obama and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, chair of the Council on Women and Girls, in the Oval Office to announce the initiative on Wednesday.

A couple points: first, college students tend to vote much for Democrats than Republicans. These are the people who pushed hard to get Obama elected the first time, and sure helped the 2nd time. So why is Obama’s base so involved with sexual assault? Perhaps this is part of the “if it feels good, do it” culture pushed by Obama and the Dems, along with a society of loose morals. Sexual assault has always been around, and, sadly, will always be around. Why has it grown during Obama’s presidency?

2nd, Obama rarely does anything without an ulterior motive. Might one of those be to give the federal government even more direct control over state and private colleges? If you think that’s all conspiracy-like, you haven’t been paying attention the last 5 years.

Then there’s this, from Jammie Wearing Fools

Left unsaid: All the folks listed above have failed over the course of five years to do anything about this so-called epidemic. Meanwhile, they never mention the epidemic of abortion.  Hundreds of thousands will fight the cold weather to march against that epidemic today, but apparently that isn’t newsworthy.

Good point. So, why now? Is this another case of Obama attempting to appear as if he’s Doing Something, especially with the midterms coming this year?  Reducing sexual assault is a worthy goal. I just do not trust Obama’s motives.

Read: Obama Targets Sexual Assault On Campus, Tells Base To Stop It »

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If All You See…

By William Teach January 22, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is warmth created snow, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Camp Of The Saints, with a post on the number 56,662,169.

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2013 Was Really Warm, Meaning Doom

By William Teach January 22, 2014 – 11:02 am

How warm was 2013? Well, Warmist Bryan Walsh wants you to know that despite all that snow and cold and stuff, we’re like doomed

(Time) But don’t worry—on a global climatic scale, the heat is still on. That’s the takeaway from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) annual analysis of global climate data, which was released Tuesday. The red-hot numbers:

  • 2013 ties with 2003 as the fourth-warmest year globally since records began in 1880.
  • The annual global combined land and ocean surface temperatures was 58.12 degrees Fahrenheit (14.52 degrees Celsius), 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average (the warmest year on record is 2010, which was 1.19 degrees Fahrenheit (0.66 Celsius) above the average.
  • 2013 was the 37th consecutive year that the annual global temperature was above the average, which means that if you were born any year after 1976, you’ve never experienced a year when the global climate was average, let along cooler.
  • Including 2013, 9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the 21st century, and just one year in the 20th century—1998—was warmer than 2013.

The NOAA report, coming out in the middle of a major snowstorm and during a U.S. winter that’s been marked by the polar vortex, is a reminder that climate isn’t about the day-to-day changes in the weather (Note: NASA came out with its own report on 2013, using a different calculating method than NOAA, and found 2013 to be slightly cooler, but still the seventh-warmest year on record). It’s about the very long-term, as Gavin Schmidt, the deputy director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said on a conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon:

There you go: day to day changes (you know, like a 17 year pause, 4 out of the past 5 winters being brutal, and this one looks like it might follow that pattern) are meaningless. Except when they back up the Warmist’s memes, then they have meaning.

Anyhow, you know what is missing from the entire article? Proof that the warming is anthropogenic.

And 2014, despite the snowy and chilly start in the U.S., could be even hotter. Scientists now say that an El Nino seems likely to develop later this year, which is likely to push temperatures up in 2014 and 2015, since El Nino years tend to be warmer. So enjoy the snow while you can—it will likely be a faint memory by time Americans are sweating in July.

El Nino is a natural pattern, so, this would mean that if 2014 ends up being a warm one, then it is natural.

Notice that Bryan hedges his bet about 2013 being the 4th warmest by briefly mentioning that NASA has it as the 4th globally. The Hockey Schtick notes

Surprisingly, official government temperature records disagree on how much global warming there was in 2013 in comparison other years that are statistically-insignificant-meaningless-hundredths-of-a-degree different.

One thing is for sure, the globe has fortunately recovered from the Little Ice Age, which coincidentally ended in ~1850 at the start of the instrumental global temperature record, and which shows after UHI-artificial-warming and up-tampered data the temperature rise could have been as much as a whopping 0.7C since 1850. Not only that, the world’s oceans have warmed 0.09C over the past 55 years alone!

So, um, which was it? How can we trust the data when the conclusions are different? How can the models possibly be correct (the vast majority aren’t, BTW) when the data is all over the place?

Again, none of the hyperventilating about tiny changes in temperature prove anthropogenic causation.

Read: 2013 Was Really Warm, Meaning Doom »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming, New Climate Deniers | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Prosperity Is Driving Climate Change, Per UN Report

By William Teach January 22, 2014 – 8:38 am

Being a rich country is considered bad, as is living a modern lifestyle

(Daily Caller) Growing global economies through expanded trade between rich and poor countries is driving global warming, according to a draft report from the United Nation’s climate bureaucracy. The international agency said that rich countries are “outsourcing” carbon dioxide emissions to poor countries through increasing international trade.

The draft report, obtained by the U.K.’s Guardian, argues that these “outsourced” emissions come “in the form of electronic devices such as smartphones, cheap clothes and other goods manufactured in China and other rising economies but consumed in the U.S. and Europe.”

Nothing is better for lifting people out of poverty than cheap, abundant energy. A warmer climate is much better for health and living conditions than a cool one. But, the Warmists at the UN, who spend lots of time taking fossil fueled flights around the world while living it up on the taxpayer funded credit card, eating fancy meals, dressing in expensive clothes, driving nice cars, staying at nice hotels, tell us that prosperity is Bad.

The U.N. draft report warned that “emissions of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases are warming the planet grew twice as fast in the first decade of the 21st century as they did during the previous three decades,” reports The Guardian.

Strange, because there has been no statistically significant warming since 1998, and no warming at all this century. In fact, some show a tiny (what would also be considered, in honesty, statistically insignificant) decrease in the global temperature.

“If we are just looking at our national inventory to understand the emissions trends, it is just not telling the full picture of our impacts,” Cynthia Cummis, a climate policy expert at the World Resources Institute, told The Guardian. “We need to understand the full life cycle of all the goods and services that we are purchasing and selling.”

“The consumers that are importing those goods have some responsibility for those goods that are happening outside of our boundaries,” Cummis added.

There you go, Warmists: stop buying anything not made locally. Give up your smartphone, electronics, clothes, and anything else made in China and other companies.

Read: Prosperity Is Driving Climate Change, Per UN Report »

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Target Joins Growing Number Of Companies Dropping Health Insurance For Part-Timers

By William Teach January 22, 2014 – 8:19 am

More victims of Obama’s signature legislation, aided and abetted by most Democrats

(Bloomberg) Target Corp. (TGT) said it will end health insurance for part-time employees, joining Trader Joe’s Co., Home Depot Inc. and other retailers that have scaled back benefits in response to changes from Obamacare.

About 10 percent of Target’s part-time employees, defined as those working fewer than 30 hours a week, use the company’s health plans now, according to an announcement posted on the Minneapolis-based company’s website. Target said it would pay $500 to part-timers losing coverage and a consulting firm will help workers sign up for new Obamacare plans.

$500 is what, no more than two months of premiums on the Obamacare Exchanges, at best? Anyhow, why would Target and other companies do this?

The U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the largest regulatory overhaul of health care since the 1960s, creating a system of penalties and rewards to encourage people to obtain medical insurance. The law known as Obamacare doesn’t require most companies to cover part-time workers, and offering them health plans may disqualify those people from subsidies in new government-run insurance exchanges that opened in October.

Part-time employees have low enrollment rates for insurance via their company because those plans tend to be rather expensive. So, not that many people will be affected. That said, Obamacare encourages, heck, it incents, companies to drop health insurance offerings for part-timers, that way the part-timers will be eligible for taxpayer funded subsidies. In fact, the companies can be on the receiving end of a massive fine/tax if any employee obtains insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, and the ones most likely to do that would be part-timers.

It also incents companies to move employees to part-time. So, not only will we hear about more and more companies dropping their health insurance offerings overall during 2014, along with companies seeing their plans cancelled and replacing them with plans that are more expensive, particularly for the deductibles, we will see companies moving more employees to part-time hours as 2015 and the (illegally delayed) employer mandate. Welcome to the Obama/Democrat economy. It’s no wonder they want to raise the minimum wage: people will be working fewer hours thanks to their own policies.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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LA Times: We Only Have 15 Years Left Before Climate Doom

By William Teach January 21, 2014 – 3:06 pm

And Everyone Else needs to stop the foot-dragging, per their editorial board

Stop the foot-dragging on climate change

The world has very little time — perhaps 15 years — to make serious inroads on climate change, according to a leaked report from a United Nations panel. Current efforts, even among the most committed nations, fall short, and at the current rate of carbon emissions, the problem might grow too large to overcome with existing technology.

Yet the recalcitrance and myth-making about global warming continue — and become more prevalent — in the United States. Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell moved to employ a little-known law to try to halt a key portion of the Obama administration’s climate plan. And at a Senate committee hearing on climate change, Republican senators delivered their usual speeches denying that a problem exists. There was recently cold weather in the Northeast, they argued. And New Orleans hasn’t seen particularly bad hurricanes during the last few years. If anything is to be done about climate change, several of them hinted or said outright, it must be accomplished without taking away jobs or driving up electricity bills.

Here’s a start: the LA Times could stop killing trees to publish its paper. They could stop using fossil fuels to disperse their paper. They could stop using air conditioning, heating, and make sure no fridges at the office have ice makers. All those on the editorial board could pledge to give up their own use of fossil fuels. Those are just a few measures to show that they really believe that “climate change” is a real issue, rather than a way of pushing far, far left political dogma.

It would be misleading to suggest that there will be no sacrifice involved in reducing carbon emissions.

Where’s the sacrifice from the LA Times and its editorial board? Heck, from any Warmists?

Read: LA Times: We Only Have 15 Years Left Before Climate Doom »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 21, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a wonderful carbon neutral bike, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Independent Sentinel, with a post on Common Core’s porn-sex curricula.

PS: sorry, another tattoo.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Study Prognosticates That “Climate Change” Could Cause More El Nino’s

By William Teach January 21, 2014 – 11:05 am

The cult is trotting out yet another scary story

(USA Today) Some of the worst El Niños, the infamous climate patterns that shake up weather around the world, could double in frequency in upcoming decades due to global warming, says a new study out Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

During an El Niño, water temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean tend to be warmer-than-average for an extended period of time – typically at least three to five months. This warm water brings about significant changes in global weather patterns.

The most powerful El Niños – such as the ones that developed in 1982-83 and 1997-98 – are forecast to occur once every 10 years throughout the rest of this century, according to study lead author Wenju Cai of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia’s national science agency. Over the past 100 years or so, however these “extreme” El Niños occurred only once every 20 years, he said.

Hilarious. We know the conditions that cause an El Nino to occur, but we do not understand how those conditions come about in the first place.

The research results came from an aggregation of 20 climate models, which were used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Oh, good, more computer models.

“It looks like a solid study,” said meteorologist Michael Mann of Penn State University, who was not involved in the research. “The authors appear to provide reasonably convincing evidence that El Niño events are likely to become more extreme as the climate continues to warm, in turn implying greater future regional climate/weather extremes than past studies.”

If Michael “robust debate” Mann (who is being called out by Judith Curry) thinks this is solid, it’s probably complete bunk. Regardless, you know what it doesn’t prove? Anthropogenic causation.

Read: Study Prognosticates That “Climate Change” Could Cause More El Nino’s »

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

If You Thought Obtaining Obamacare Was Hard, Wait Till You Try And Cancel It

By William Teach January 21, 2014 – 8:49 am

It is getting easier to actually enroll in Obamacare, as the website issues are being fixed…except for those pesky security features…and ability to pay online…and many State run exchanges…anyhow, we knew that the website wouldn’t stay a complete failure as time went on. But, what if you found a plan offered outside of Obamacare? Lesli Hill, who saw her policy cancelled thanks to Obamacare, attempted to enroll in Ocare, but then found out that her insurer had a similar plan, so she decided to forget the Ocare plan and sign up directly with her insurer. She was told that she had to cancel the Ocare plan first. How’d that work out?

(Fox News) However, shortly afterward Hill, 62, learned she could once again purchase an individual plan — with better benefits — outside the exchange. She checked with Blue Cross Blue Shield in early December and was told she’d have to cancel her ObamaCare plan first.

“At that point, I hadn’t paid my premium … so I thought okay, that’ll be easy to do,” she said.

Ostensibly, yes. She tried using a simple “terminate button” on the website — but it wasn’t working.

Thus started what we’ll call the journey.

Hill first tried the HealthCare.gov help line, and “literally was on hold for several hours a day,” she said. After multiple attempts, without much luck, she tried the online chat. She was redirected back to the help line. The “script” that operators were reading from did not seem to address how someone could actually cancel a plan.

Hill continued to call the help line around the holidays, and eventually was given the impression that, at last, the plan was terminated.

But then, a $950 premium was withdrawn from her account — which she knew meant she was still enrolled.

As The Lonely Conservative notes, thinks continue to go downhill from there

She was told she had to call a “special department” that handles cancellations, but then they refused to give her the number. She had to jump through all sorts of hoops and enlist the help of Blue Cross Blue Shield before she finally got the policy cancelled. When asked about cancelling Obamacare policies the HHS spokesperson said to call the Marketplace consumer call center, which is the same place that gave Ms. Hill the runaround.

This goes directly to having The Government involved in consumer choice purchases. Because we all know how efficient The Government is. In honesty, some are good, some are bad. I have to deal with government agencies here and there in my job. Dealing with the Social Security Admin is usually easy, in terms of contact (usually a 20 minute wait) and getting the docs I need (25 minutes usually). Veteran’s Affairs? I don’t even bother to call. The line is usually so busy that they won’t even leave you on hold. I tell people to simply go to the VA office. Other departments are pretty bad, too. The IRS was very helpful in one personal issue. But, wait times are often long. And when considering Obamacare, you are mixing public with private, and there are numerous public institutions involved, and government tends to also be very inflexible. At least in terms of how they deal with Citizens.

Don’t expect the processes for Ocare to get better anytime ever.

More: I don’t usually link back because I have a script set up to show any trackbacks, but this from the Daley Gator amused the heck out me

THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA OF HEALTH CARE

You can check in, but you can’t check out. Funny, because I had that song playing on the way to work. Serendipity.

Read: If You Thought Obtaining Obamacare Was Hard, Wait Till You Try And Cancel It »

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Dems On MLK Day: Vote Is Precious, So Let’s Not Verify That Someone Is Eligible

By William Teach January 21, 2014 – 8:27 am

The Talking Points Memo went out and Democrats yammered on about voter ID

(Daily Caller) Martin Luther King Day is a day of service, quiet reflection — and implications that those supporting voter ID laws are akin to 1960s segregationists.

Democratic politicians and their allies took to the airwaves Monday to campaign against state laws mandating some form of voter identification, often suggesting that feelings of racial animus are behind the initiatives. Legislators supporting the laws — largely Republicans — argue that they help keep elections fair by limiting voter fraud. Opponents claim the rules are “restrictions” deliberately designed by legislators to limit the voting rights of impoverished minorities, which they say often do not possess appropriate identification.

Those opponents were out in full force on MLK Day, perhaps rallied by Vice President Joe Biden’s speech during an event commemorating the legendary civil rights advocate on Monday. “[We’re] trying to stem the tide of new attempts — new attempts — to restrict the right of our people to vote,” he declared. “I have to admit I never thought we’d be fighting the fight again on voting rights.”

“This has been the ultimate fight,” Biden later bellowed, “because our opponents know — they KNOW! — the single most dangerous thing to give us is the right to vote! They know what that is!”

At least he didn’t use the black voice and talk about putting y’all back in chains. That, and no one will let him buy a shotgun and fire two blasts in the air. But, why is he complaining, when Democrat States do the same thing?

Other Democrats took the hint. “Dr. King has said it in the past, I’ve said it in the past, and I continue to say it: the vote is precious,” Democratic Georgia congressman John Lewis said on MSNBC. “People I knew, people that I work with, people that I marched with, people that Dr. King worked with and marched with — some of those people DIED for the right to vote, the right to participate. And we have to continue to open up our society and let all of our citizens come in.”

The vote is precious. I agree 100% with Congresscritter Lewis. And, as such, we should 100% make sure that people who are voting are legally allowed to do so. We should make sure that legal and illegal residents are not voting. we should make sure that dead people aren’t voting. We should make sure that people do not vote more than once. We should make sure a person’s vote counts, because anytime there are votes submitted that shouldn’t count, it reduces the impact of a legal vote. If not, then all those people who marched, and even died, for that right to vote will have seen those actions wasted.

Perhaps that’s why deep Democrat states like Hawaii and New Hampshire require photo ID to vote. In Hawaii’s case, if someone doesn’t have it, they will be asked lots of specific questions to verify their identity. New Hampshire has provisions if someone doesn’t have one. Just like in the Republican states that passed voter ID laws.

Blueish states like Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware require proof, which could be photo ID or some other form of identification, like a paycheck stub. Then you have Connecticut, Colorado, New York, and Washington, along with California and Obama’s home state of Illinois (early voting, every time. And first time voting unless one submits a copy of ID with registration).

So, why are Democrats like Biden complaining about taking away the vote? Apparently, they’re doing just that in their states.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Dems On MLK Day: Vote Is Precious, So Let’s Not Verify That Someone Is Eligible »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Democrats, Elections | 3 Comments | Trackback URL
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