Bummer: Over 93% Of EPA Staff Considered “Non-Essential”

By William Teach October 4, 2013 – 10:28 am

Kinda tells you how far they’ve gone from the core mission, eh? (via Junk Science)

(Reuters) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will take one of the biggest hits of any federal agency if the government shuts down this week, operating with under 7 percent of its employees, according to guidance issued by the agency.

Among those furloughed would be most workers at the Office of Air and Radiation, which is in charge of writing and implementing most of the EPA’s major air pollution rules. The clock would also stop, for now, on the EPA’s eagerly-awaited proposal on renewable fuel volume standards for 2014.

I’m not sure businesses are eagerly-awaiting those standard. Unless “eagerly” is a substitute for trepidation. Those standards are going to cause more and more problems and increase costs. Either way, when less than 7% of your employees are deemed essential, then the agency is out of control and mostly worthless.

Read: Bummer: Over 93% Of EPA Staff Considered “Non-Essential” »

Posted in Current Affairs, Energy, Environment | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Arizona Gov’t, Businesses Fight To Re-open Grand Canyon

By William Teach October 4, 2013 – 8:04 am

However, Obama’s Department Of Making Americans Feel The Pain have said “nope”

(Fox News) With the partial suspension of U.S. government services showing no signs of ending, tourists will continue to be turned away from the Grand Canyon, despite a push by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and local businesses to reopen the state’s signature national park.

Brewer wants the iconic park reopened and has offered to pay for it with state money, but her proposal was rejected Thursday by a park official who said that as long as the federal government remains shut down, such a plan isn’t an option.

“I appreciate the support and I thanked them for the offer, but it’s not an offer we can accept,” said park superintendent Dave Uberuaga.

Private businesses have also offered to chip in to keep the park open. Denied

In other news, yes, Obama’s hysterics have actually closed the Grand Canyon. Seriously. The Grand Canyon. A massive hole in the ground 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and reaching a depth of over a mile. Closed. No hiking. Because, apparently, we need the Helping Hand of Government to understand how to hike

Read: Arizona Gov’t, Businesses Fight To Re-open Grand Canyon »

Posted in Current Affairs | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Washington Post: Republicans Owe Capitol Police A Paycheck And Apology After Shooting

By William Teach October 4, 2013 – 7:12 am

Apparently this will become a meme (at least for me) as the sorta-shutdown continues, with the Washington Post Editorial Board sipping the sweet sweet kool-aid of demagoguery. Remember, they aren’t “rabid partisans“, same as Senator Dianne Feinstein. This one gets even more non-rabidly partisan

In shooting near Capitol, government workers rush into danger

(Two paragraphs describing Capitol Hill shooting yesterday)

What seems beyond doubt is that Secret Service personnel, Capitol Police and probably many others rushed toward, not away from, danger — as they are trained to do and as Americans expect them to do. Inside Congress, aides took cover, traded anxious text messages and then went on with their work.

Like hundreds of thousands of other federal employees, these are men and women whose contributions have been demeaned by the federal shutdown, who are being asked to work without, at least for the moment, being paid — and who are doing their jobs with considerably more dignity than the House of Representatives has mustered.

“We all owe the Capitol Police a debt of gratitude for their work every day; no finer examples of professionalism & bravery,” tweeted House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). That’s true. But Mr. Boehner owes them, and the rest of the federal workforce, more than a 140-character message of thanks. He owes them a paycheck; he owes them a budget; he owes them an apology.

Good thing the WP Editorial Board took their time to get their facts straight. They might have done something like search and read on ye olde Internet.

The U.S. Capitol Police will be exempt from the furloughs, and House cafeterias are not likely to see closures because they are run by private contractors, though they could scale back their services if the customer volume decreases.

The WPEB isn’t alone in the meme without research that the Capitol Police aren’t being paid. You can find all sorts of media, blogs, and tweets playing this game.

PS: When’s the last time you saw hard-core Progressives enthusiastic over someone using a gun for its intended purpose?

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Washington Post: Republicans Owe Capitol Police A Paycheck And Apology After Shooting »

Posted in Journalistic Malpractice, Unhinged Tools | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

According To Obama, NC Teachers Should Be Fired If They Walk Off

By William Teach October 3, 2013 – 7:20 pm

North Carolina teachers want more money from taxpayers for doing the jobs they voluntarily applied for and tool

(Raleigh N&O) A proposed statewide teacher walk-out to protest pay and working conditions is getting a mixed response from the people it is supposed to benefit.

Some think skipping school en masse could give teachers leverage in budgeting decisions, while others see the proposed disruption as a set-back to their relationships with parents, administrators and students.

Word of the proposed Nov. 4 protest first spread via a pseudonymous web posting and now has a Wake County teacher as a central advocate. The plan calls for teachers to not show up for school that day to press for “a fair balance between workload, expectations and compensation for our teachers,” according to a rallying cry on Facebook and at ncteacherwalkout.weebly.com.

According to Obama

(National Review) During his speech today, the president said something rather strange. “If a worker shut down a manufacturing plant until they got what they wanted, they’d be fired,” Obama shouted.

So, teachers walk out, they should be immediately fired. Thanks for setting the standard, Mr. Obama!

Read: According To Obama, NC Teachers Should Be Fired If They Walk Off »

Posted in Barry Obama, NC News | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Oceans Are Doomed From Trace Amounts Of Gas Necessary For Life

By William Teach October 3, 2013 – 2:55 pm

Today’s scary, or, is that, unhinged? story made possible because you drove a fossil fueled vehicle to work today, and might have actually used hair spray

(Reuters) The world’s oceans are under greater threat than previously believed from a “deadly trio” of global warming, declining oxygen levels and acidification, an international study said on Thursday.

The oceans have continued to warm, pushing many commercial fish stocks towards the poles and raising the risk of extinction for some marine species, despite a slower pace of temperature rises in the atmosphere this century, it said.

“Risks to the ocean and the ecosystems it supports have been significantly underestimated,” according to the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), a non-governmental group of leading scientists.

Corals might cease to grow if temperatures rose by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) and start to dissolve at 3 degrees (5.4F), the study said.

“If”. Funny thing is, corals and most life in the sea and on land developed during periods where CO2 was much, much higher as were temperatures. And so was the sea level. How else do they think so many of these coral based islands came into being?

Read: Oceans Are Doomed From Trace Amounts Of Gas Necessary For Life »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 20 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach October 3, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…are wonderful hills that would be perfect for wind turbine farm, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Scared Monkeys, with a post about the overestimation for the California Obamacare exchange.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

New Zealand To Hold Hearing On Kiribati “Climate Refugee”

By William Teach October 3, 2013 – 11:11 am

The results of the court case could have far-ranging implications

(Vancouver Sun) A man from one of the lowest-lying countries on Earth is trying to convince New Zealand judges that he’s a refugee – suffering not from persecution, but from climate change.

The 37-year-old and his wife left his remote atoll in the Pacific country of Kiribati six years ago for higher ground and better prospects in New Zealand, where their three children were born. Immigration authorities have twice rejected his argument that rising sea levels make it too dangerous for him and his family to return to Kiribati.

So on Oct. 16, the man’s lawyer, Michael Kidd, plans to argue the case before New Zealand’s High Court. Kidd, who specializes in human rights cases, told The Associated Press he will appeal the case all the way to the country’s Supreme Court if necessary.

Legal experts consider the man’s case a long shot, but it will nevertheless be closely watched, and might have implications for tens of millions of residents in low-lying islands around the world.

Warmists, including high level ones at the UN IPCC, have created this fantasy about “climate refugees”, because people never moved to a more preferable climate before SUVs.

I’ve mentioned this same guy before, and noted

In other words, he didn’t want to go back to the poo infested waters of Kiribati so he decided to apply using the silly “climate refugee” crap. Pun intended.

The waters around Kiribati are not rising. In fact, the islands themselves are growing. Even if the waters were rising, how the heck do these flat earth Warmists think they came into being anyhow? The islands are coral based, hence, the seas had to be higher in the past to allow the coral to build what would become islands when the sea level went down.

Here’s the sea level data for Kiribati, the last measurement by the Aussie government, which ran the monitoring station

Here’s more data, via Eyes On Brown

Read More »

Read: New Zealand To Hold Hearing On Kiribati “Climate Refugee” »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Washington Post: Republican Shutdown Means US Is Threatened By Terrorists

By William Teach October 3, 2013 – 7:55 am

Yesterday the Editorial Board of the Washington Post said they weren’t partisan, but, hey, those Republicans were failing America. Today, they ask why Obama is playing games with closing monuments and stuff Republicans hate national security

Government shutdown puts U.S. security at risk

IF HOUSE Republicans have had an obsession to rival their hatred of the Affordable Care Act, it has been their determination to find a scandal in the 2012 attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, in which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed.

Yet this week those same Republicans are putting U.S. embassies across the world at risk with their shutdown of the U.S. government. More broadly, they are endangering national security at a time when the United States remains under threat from al-Qaeda and affiliated groups.

Wait, I thought Obama said “Osama Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is on the run”?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the intelligence committee, said on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday that 72 percent of the civilian intelligence agency workforce has been furloughed.

“This means that, with the exception of a few intelligence agencies that have a significant number of military personnel, the lights are being turned off and the majority of the people who produce our intelligence, analyze that intelligence and provide warning of terrorist attacks or advise policymakers of major national security events will be prevented from doing their jobs,” she said. “We have ambassadors in threatened capitals . . . [who] rely on their intelligence briefers and the tactical intelligence support to their security teams as much as they rely on the Marines who guard front gates. . . . What we are doing now puts American lives at risk.”

Ms. Feinstein is hardly a rabid partisan..

It is reckless behavior in a time of war, and it is, above all, Speaker John Boehner and his allies who are at fault.

Well, you knew someone had to play this card at some point. Will they play the racism card tomorrow?

Read: Washington Post: Republican Shutdown Means US Is Threatened By Terrorists »

Posted in Journalistic Malpractice | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Seven Stupid Ways Obama Admin Spent Money During Shutdown

By William Teach October 3, 2013 – 7:18 am

You’ve heard of other ways Team Obama has spent money, such as with all the #Barrycades around monuments. Here are 7 of the dumbest….at least so far

(Daily Caller) The government is shut down and thousands of government workers have been sent home. But will it save any money?

The shutdown in during the Clinton Presidency cost taxpayers about $1.5 billion in 22 days. According to IHS Global Insight, the shutdown could cost the U.S. economy $1.6 billion per week — and NBC News reported that the shutdown would cost $12.5 million per hour.

Here are seven things that the government, in all its wisdom, has opted to do during the current shutdown.

1. Federal agencies created new websites to tell visitors that they don’t have enough funding to run their old websites.

Federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Park Service, have created new splash pages to tell visitors that they don’t have enough money or manpower to maintain their normal websites. The Internal Revenue Service website will be active, but won’t be updated — at least they’re not auditing you.

Brilliant! Create web pages to tell you their webpages are down. We also get

  • The feds shut down the parking lot of Mt. Vernon, but not the park itself. (the park itself is privately run)
  • A D.C-area canal is closed and had all the pumps taken off of it. (bikers are still using the trails)
  • Angry moms launch full-scale assault to reopen D.C. turtle park. (and the park service keeps putting up the barricades at the turtle park)
  • Not closing parks near Democratic senators’ houses.
  • Posting park rangers at the WWII memorial to prevent rogue veterans from getting in. (Obama admin directly ordered the closure)
  • The DoD is postponing the Navy-Air Force football game. (this one was all about optics, not money)

Of course, there is the biggest waste of money during the “shutdown”, namely, the “Affordable” Care Act, which continues to be pathetic.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Seven Stupid Ways Obama Admin Spent Money During Shutdown »

Posted in Good Move Slick | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Doctor Sues To Force Obama To Enforce Employer Mandate

By William Teach October 2, 2013 – 2:55 pm

He has more cajones than Congressional Republicans (via Ace)

(UK Daily Mail) The lawsuit, filed by Dr. Larry Kawa, claims that the regulatory changes violate the Administrative Procedure Act and go beyond President Obama’s constitutional powers.

‘He has no more power to do that than your or I,’ Kawa told reporters during a press conference Tuesday. ‘In fact, he has an affirmative duty to enforce the law, and we are here to make sure that he does that.’

‘I’ve made investments of both time and money, as a law abiding citizen and a local business owner,’ he complained, ‘to make sure that my business was in compliance with the law. And as soon as I did that this president moved the goal posts.’

‘I am tired of government picking winners and losers, victors and victims, and I suggest it ends here today,’ Kawa said.

Ace thinks that the court will find that Dr. Kawa will have “no standing”, despite having suffered actual harm. Perhaps this will get more groups, and Congressional Republicans, off their posteriors regarding all the other waivers and delays, which are not lawful.

Read: Doctor Sues To Force Obama To Enforce Employer Mandate »

Posted in Healthcare | 2 Comments | Trackback URL
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