Obama Was Told Benghazi Was A Terrorist Attack

By William Teach January 14, 2014 – 6:52 am

You don’t say

(Fox News) Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.

I’d recommend reading James Rosen’s long article, which includes the transcripts, and boils down to the fact that all the Defense folks knew this was a terrorist attack just before SecDef Leon Panetta’s regularly scheduled 5pm briefing with Mr. Obama. Panetta himself stated that he told Mr. Obama that the it was a terrorist attack.

Furthermore, the State Department knew it was a terrorist attack. So how, exactly, did Team Obama come up with the ludicrous “spontaneous demonstration over a video no one had ever heard of turned violent” talking point? And continue pushing it for two weeks during campaign season, even pushing it at the United Nations? The only person punished was the film maker (who did violate his parole, let’s be honest), but none of the terrorists, who seem to be able to be found easily by news outlets.

Fortunately, other than Fox News, no one else in the media seems interested. There’s nothing on the front page of the Washington Post, NY Times, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, LA Times, MSNBC, or CNN, among others. However, they all have at least one article on Chris Christine and “lane closures”. Most have at least two or more. There are opinion pieces. All despite there being little public interest in the story, and people’s opinions of Christie having mostly changed not a whit. But the media is going to beat that drum to death, because 1) Christie’s a Republican and 2) he’s the only one beating Hillary Clinton in a head to head presidential matchup at this time. This same media seems to have little interest where the video talking point came from and where Obama was after that meeting with Panetta on 9/11/12. Nor any of the other issues of the story, except in terms of protecting Obama and Hillary.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Oops: Young Folks Not Signing Up For OfailCare

By William Teach January 13, 2014 – 7:00 pm

One step closer to the “death spiral”

Young adults make up almost one-quarter of ACA signups

Young adults account for slightly less than one-fourth of the Americans who signed up for health plans during the initial three months of federal and state insurance marketplaces — a smaller share than government and industry officials have said will be pivotal to making the economics of the health-care law work.

The figures, part of a monthly progress report issued Monday on enrollment in the new marketplaces, offer the first glimpse into whether the health plans available under the Affordable Care Act are becoming provinces of the sick and old — or are managing to attract young, healthy people who previously did not consider insurance worthwhile.

According to the report, released by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, 23 percent of nearly 1.2 million people who enrolled through the federal insurance marketplace by the end of December are between the ages of 18 and 34. In 14 states and the District, which are running their own new marketplaces, 25 percent of the nearly 900,000 people who enrolled fall within that age group.

The figures mean that the proportion of young adults who have signed up is smaller than estimates by the government and outside health policy analysts have suggested is necessary to make the exchanges work well. It is estimated that roughly two Americans in five in the new health plans should be young adults to prevent the plans’ premiums from rising and some insurers from potentially dropping out.

Well, that’s strange, because Obama won this age group both times. These are his base, yet these same folks don’t seem too enthused to sign up for the same piece of sh*t they wanted for everyone else.

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Are You Ready For Polar Votex Two?

By William Teach January 13, 2014 – 2:57 pm

More importantly, are you read for the anti-science climahysterics to blame cold weather on too much heat?

(Daily Mail) If you live in the American Midwest or East Coast, you may want to hold off on putting away your winter gear.

Just as temperatures are beginning to warm in much of the U.S, another arctic blast in the form of a polar vortex appears to be on the horizon.

The upcoming front of icy temperatures is expected to bring arctic air to southern Canada and then move into the northern plains of the U.S. before moving to the Midwest and East Coast – each of which is still recovering from last week’s frigid temperatures. (snip)

‘Following the retreat of arctic air this weekend, waves of progressively colder will move southward over Canada next week,’ AccuWeather.com Lead Long-Range Forecaster Paul Pastelok told AOL.com.

Forecasters expect the first stage of the new arctic blast to hit the northern plains by Monday, the lower Mississippi Valley and Midwest Tuesday and Wednesday then the East from Thursday.

Like the last bout of icy air, this one is the result of a portion of the polar vortex breaking away from the Arctic Circle.

‘We will likely see a piece of the polar vortex break off and set up just north of the Great Lakes spanning Jan. 16 to 20,’ Mr Pastelok said.

This one will not be as bad as the previous one, particularly for Southern states, which will only see a slight dip in normal temps. Here in Raleigh, we’re looking at a projection of 44F for Thursday. We can expect the typical caterwauling about cold being caused by warming temps, though. Easy prediction.

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If All You See…

By William Teach January 13, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible plastic water bottle causing islands to tip over from sea rise, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is And So It Goes In Shreveport, with a post on OMG, SCLS TO TCH SCL MDA CLSS IN NJ LOL!. Want to know what that means? Read the post.

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Remember, Climate And Weather Are Different (Except When It Helps Warmists)

By William Teach January 13, 2014 – 11:54 am

Have you ever noticed that we see more of these stories and opinion pieces when weather events do not help the “climate change” narrative? Here’s anti-science Ian Steadman at the New Statesman

The weather and climate change are not the same thing

One of The Armstrong and Miller Show’s better sketches opens with a couple sitting in their living room on a rainy day. The man tuts, gestures to the window, and asks: “Whatever happened to global warming, eh?”

“Stop!” a voice-over demands. “From 1 October, if you say, ‘Whatever happened to global warming, eh?’ whenever it’s a bit cold or wet, you could be cooling off – in jail.” It’s a simple gag about the kind of bore who doesn’t understand the difference between weather and climate.

The confusion between the two is sometimes deliberate and sometimes not. The wilfully ignorant came out in force recently, reacting smugly to the plight of the 74 passengers on board the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, a Russian research vessel chartered by the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) that has been stuck in ice since Christmas Day. On 2 January, 52 non-essential crew members were successfully evacuated from the ship.

Yet, when it’s warm, when a hurricane occurs, when there are tornadoes, and “Indian summer”, etc, these same Warmists come out in force proclaiming that this weather is proof!!!!!!!!! of climate change. Heck, they now blame cold weather and snow on “climate change” caused by greenhouse gases.

Yet one localised incident does not disprove the vast body of evidence demonstrating that the world is heating up, decade by decade. This kind of propaganda trick is no different from a creationist using a missing link in the fossil record of a single species as “proof” that the entire structure of evolutionary theory is flawed.

On one hand, Ian is correct. The Earth is certainly in a warm period. But, Skeptics are not arguing against a warm period: we’re arguing about causation. Warmists proclaim that it is mostly/solely caused by Mankind. Skeptics argue that it is mostly/solely natural. Warmists proclaim that the Arctic will completely melt. Yet, this year the Arctic was above previous years, when we were told it would be ice free in the summer. This was the least active tornado year on record. There have been no major hurricanes making landfall on the US since 2005, the longest time since the Civil War. Only one barely-a-hurricane to make landfall since 2008. This decade has been one of the snowiest on record (so far). What was drought is now wet. 4 of the past 5 winters were really cold, and this year looks to be shaping up into an average winter. None of this is supposed to happen, according to Warmists. So, yes, Skeptics highlight all these weather events, because we were told the opposite would happen.

The models predicted the opposite. They did not predict the 17 year pause. They did not predict that there would be no warming, in fact slight cooling, during the 21st Century. Climate is the long term effect of weather. 17 years is a long term.

Anyway,just remember to remind Warmists that weather is not climate when they start trotting out weather events when it gets warm.

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Surprise: People Are Having Trouble Using Obamacare

By William Teach January 13, 2014 – 9:01 am

 

The heck you say

Help! I can’t use my Obamacare benefits

Jeanne Patterson really needs to see a doctor but had to cancel her appointment last week.

Why? Because her new Obamacare benefits were not in order, forcing her to spend hours and hours on hold with her insurer, Independence Blue Cross.

Many folks who signed up for coverage through the state and federal exchanges are running into roadblocks now that they are trying to use their new benefits. And though exchange officials and insurers have urged consumers to call their insurers if they encounter problems, many say they either wait endlessly on hold or get the runaround. Coverage for the first wave of Obamacare applicants took effect Jan. 1.

Patterson’s journey started New Year’s Day, when she landed in the emergency room for a stomach ailment. The Independence policy number she received didn’t work and the hospital required her to sign a form saying she would pay for care herself, though it agreed to bill her later. She then received an ID card for her HMO plan in the mail a few days later, so she made an appointment with her primary care doctor and a gastric specialist for follow up.

But when the 59-year-old went to her doctor last week, she was told he couldn’t see her because she hadn’t designated him as her primary care provider. If she wanted to be treated, she’d have to pay for the visit and lab work and request reimbursement. She spent an hour on hold with Independence trying to fix the problem and left the office without care.

She hadn’t designated that doctor as her primary care physician, which is a requirement. A “mandate”, if you will. So, she could not make the appointment, at least in a manner that would be covered by the insurance. When she went online a did so, that meant she would have to wait til February for an appointment. So she spent hours and hours calling the insurance company, without being able to talk to anyone. Independence told CNN that everything was in order, and they do not know what the problem was, and to “give them a call”. So there’s obviously a huge disconnect between what everyone knows and what the insurance company is telling the doctors.

This, and similar stories, are happening all over the country with Obamacare coverage. And, let’s be honest, this is a short term issue, at least in terms of making sure that people have coverage and everyone, especially the medical professionals and all the systems and people at the insurance companies, know it. One would have thought that everyone involved, meaning the insurance companies and government, would have worked to make this work right off the bat, instead of giving fodder to those who are against Obamacare. Instead, this whole thing highlights why having the government intimately involved is a Bad Idea.

But, the poor customer service, the long phone waits, and other issues will most likely continue. And rationing is coming. For one thing, when you artificially reduce profit, something is going to suffer. That will be the number of low level customer service reps on-staff. I know lots of folks have always thought insurance companies are big meanies, and surely there are bad stories out there, but most have few problems. In all the years I’ve been working and had insurance, multiple companies, I’ve never had a problem. In fact, I’ve always had a good experience in terms of getting help (except for one time with car insurance, but I still received quick help, and I blame the small agent). Now Obamacare looks to add tens of millions to the insurance rolls (which would be a good thing if the legislation made sense and wasn’t a complete disaster) while controlling costs. Again, something has to give, part of which will be customer service on a permanent basis.

But, remember, “lane closures”.

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What’s The Difference Between “Bridgegate” And Obama’s IRS Scandal?

By William Teach January 13, 2014 – 8:36 am

John Podhoretz discusses at the NY Post

Why Bridgegate made headlines but Obama’s IRS scandal didn’t

Most government scandals involve the manipulation of the system in obscure ways by people no one has ever heard of. That is why George Washington Bridgegate is nearly a perfect scandal — because it is comprehensible and (as they say in Hollywood) “relatable” to everyone who has ever been in a car. This is the reason this one is not going to go away so easily, even if one accepts the contention that Gov. Chris Christie had nothing whatsoever to do with it. (snip)

And yet, you know what is also something everybody would find “relatable”? Politicians who sic the tax man on others for political gain. Everybody has to deal with the IRS and fears it. Last year, we learned from the Internal Revenue Service itself that it had targeted ideological opponents of the president for special scrutiny and investigation — because they were ideological opponents. (snip)

And yet, according to Scott Whitlock of the Media Research Center, “In less than 24 hours, the three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy.”

The obvious difference is, as we all know, Obama’s a Democrat, Christie’s a Republican. Podhoretz goes into even more detail, including the intimate links between the media and people who work for Team Obama. Obviously, liberals, and squishy “Republicans” who tend to help Democrats more than Republicans, disagree. They say there’s not bias. Here’s Steven Taylor and the Liberalized Outside The Beltway

To begin with, I reject the premise because the IRS story did make headlines.  In fact, not only was there extensive reporting on the IRS story, there were congressional hearings.  As such, the notion that the IRS business was ignored is simply incorrect.

It continues on in that foolish liberal fashion, but, let’s note that there were headlines for stories like the IRS. But to quibble over the article headline, which Podhoretz may not have written (standard practice in the media), while ignoring the reality of the headlines of those stories being minimized is foolish. A goodly chunk of the articles over the Obama scandals were intended to reduce the impact of the scandals, to protect Obama, his team, and Democrats, while excoriating Republicans, marginalizing them, making the scandal about them, while reducing the actual scandal itself. That’s much different coverage than with “lane closures”.

Taylor further fails to note the difference in the amount of coverage.

The reason that Fast and Furious, the IRS controversy, and Benghazi have not resulted in the outcomes that many conservatives would like is not because they have not received adequate attention in the media (they have—as well as congressional attention), it is because those situations are not what many conservatives want them to be.

How would we know, when only a few brave reporters did their job? Folks like Sharyl Attkinsson, who has done great work investigating, and been subjected to foul mouthed abuse by the White House. Univision, which produced a report on Fast and Furious, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths, plus woundings. There was a collective yawn in the American media over the report.

All one has to do is ask a simple question: if Bush was president, or any other Republican, how would the media cover these same scandals? Consider the wall to wall, breathless, over the top coverage over Abu Ghraib, where low level soldiers somewhat abused prisoners in their care. This was blamed in the media by the media solely on Bush and Rumsfeld. Were any of Obama’s scandals treated in this manner? There’s your answer to media bias.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Cold Bad Weather Used To Be From Global Cooling

By William Teach January 12, 2014 – 3:12 pm

This was the 1970’s (via Not A Lot Of People Know That)

That was the 1975 Newsweek article about a coming ice age, when cold Bad Weather was caused by cooling, and just being winter and stuff. This comes via Paul Homewood at Not A Lot Of People Know That, and Paul notes

So, in a cooling world where the Arctic was getting much colder, and sea ice was expanding rapidly, we had:

  • The break up of the normal flow of winds.
  • Stagnant air (i.e. blocking zones)
  • Extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, long freezes and monsoon failure.

In other words, exactly the same things, and worse, that are now blamed on the exact opposite, a warming world.

Exactly. Of course, cold Bad Weather from warming makes as much sense as destroying wilderness to to put up a wind farm to save the environment. Or most liberal notions.

The Hockey Schtick notes that the author of the article, Peter Gwynne, stands by the article, saying “It was accurate at the time.” Linking to Daily Climate, which has an article about Mr. Gwynne (which you should read in full), we learn (the bold and colored are from The Hockey Schtick excerpt)

The unsavory afterlife of his 1975 story clearly has not soured his journalistic fervor. “I’ve been able to write for a lot of different audiences, physicists, engineers and the general public,” Gwynne said. “I’ve been willing to accept that some of that is misused and misinterpreted.”

By and large, he added, the U.S. science press has done “a pretty good job” of covering climate change. But “the political press doesn’t check. It tends to do ‘on the one hand, on the other hand.’ A lot of reporters simply will not go into issues like global warming with any understanding that the sides are not equal.”

Journalists should not ignore climate deniers, he cautioned. “You have to give all sides a fair hearing.” But that does not mean they have to be treated equally “if they don’t have the data.” [climate skeptics DO have the data, before and after it has been tampered] To do so, he said, is false balance “that leaves readers out on a limb.”

That bit was about political vs. science reporting. When it comes to AGW/climate change, it is all political reporting. Science really has little to do with it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have the recent polar vortex blamed on hot conditions.

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Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming, New Climate Deniers | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 12, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…are tons of horrible, horrible horrible plastic bottles causing extreme weather, you might just be a Warmist*

The blog of the day is Are We Lumberjacks?, with a post on house rules.

*BTW, please recycle plastic bottles. They may not be evil for AGW, but they do create real pollution.

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Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach January 12, 2014 – 8:51 am

Happy Sunday! A gorgeous day in America. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, playoff football is here. This pinup is by Gil Elvgren with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Theodore’s World discusses someone you’ll never believe was released from Gitmo
  2. The Other McCain goes inside the Christie GWB bubble
  3. The Jawa Report wonders about same crime, different charge
  4. The First Street Journal discusses Monsieur Kerry and Mideast peace
  5. Sister Toldjah notes a little bit of a revolt from House Dems
  6. Shaw’s Blog covers Iran sanctions
  7. Scared Monkeys has the youth misery index
  8. jeff g (protein wisdom) is not a licensed historian
  9. neo-neocon discusses the science being settled
  10. Maggie’s Notebook covers the company that is supposed to fix the Obamacare mess
  11. Raised On Hoecakes has the top lawsuits of the year
  12. Hot Air Pundit covers women not in the workforce
  13. Fire Andrea Mitchell notes who Obama will send to Sharon’s funeral
  14. Director Blue wonders about potential GOP suicide
  15. And last, but not least, Capital Preservation features a Dem congresswoman believing global warming causes prostitution

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

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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