Should The Government Regulate Your Grow In The Dark Plant?

By William Teach October 5, 2013 – 4:06 pm

That’s the headline on the front page of the Washington Post, slightly different at the story page

Hunkered down in a converted shipping container stationed in a San Francisco parking lot, three young entrepreneurs are tinkering with the DNA of ordinary plants in the hopes of being able to mass produce a variety that glows in the dark.

If all goes well, their start-up company will begin mailing out the first batch of seeds next spring to the 8,000 donors across the country who helped them raise nearly $500,000 in a phenomenally successful online fundraising campaign through Kickstarter.

It’s a big “if”, because enviro-hysterics and are creating issues, from Kickstarter funding because the plants are genetically modified (stuff like that never ever happened before, ya know!) to whining at government agencies to Do Something

“What if someone decides it would be cute to light up a national forest?” asked Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University and an adviser to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on synthetic biology.

Well, then, civilization might end or the planet might explode.

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 5, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is a sea that will rise hundreds of feet, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Gateway Pundit, with a post by Jim Hoft on how a disease nearly took his life. We’re all looking forward to Jim being back full time and doing the great work he’s always done. More importantly, we pray for his health to continue to get better and full recovery.

Read: If All You See… »

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Hey, Noah Had To Go Through “Climate Change”, Ya Know!

By William Teach October 5, 2013 – 12:36 pm

So he built a fossil fuels powered Arc

(Huffington Post) Noah is told by a highly creditable source (God) that climate change (40 days and nights of rain) will cause a dramatic rise in sea level (the Flood) which will, in turn, cause enormous loss of life. Noah’s response may provide guidance for us. We too have been told by a highly creditable source (science) that climate change (global warming) will cause a dramatic rise in sea level (plus many other problems) which will, in turn, cause enormous loss of life.

(snip all the way to the end of a bat guano insane article that you really have to read to understand the full bat guano insanity)

Let us avoid the survivalist mentality, rise to a higher standard than Noah, accept responsibility, and take social action in the face of scientific predictions of potentially disastrous climate change.

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Rick Perry To California: “we don’t judge success on the number of people we have on public assistance.”

By William Teach October 5, 2013 – 8:35 am

Texas Governor Rick Perry continues his tour to swipe jobs and companies from Blue States, having recently gotten into it with Maryland Commissar, er, Governor Martin O’Malley. Now…

(SFGate) Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry, on a tour aimed at pushing “red state” tax and business policies to drive growth, said Friday that a major economic difference between California and Texas is that “we don’t judge success on the number of people we have on public assistance.”

“California has substantially more liberal public assistance programs,’’ said Perry, considered a possible 2016 GOP presidential candidate, in a wide-ranging interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is a state that’s going bankrupt. You have huge debt out here..and part of that is driven by these very expensive, very rich programs.”

“We judge success by the number of people that have a job,’’ said Perry, who has been a vociferous critic of the Affordable Care Act.

He said working Texans are free to “go buy (health) insurance, or be in a company that delivers that health care for them. That’s the real future of America.”

Nor did he hold back on Obama

“The President of the United States thinks the more people on public assistance, the more successful he is as a leader,” he said.

One last excerpt

“Jerry Brown is very capable, thoughtful fellow,” he said. “He just has a different outlook than I do.”

Instead of being bombastic, abusive, and insulting, which is the way Obama and so many Democrats would do it, Perry is gracious and flattering, and simply notes a different set of ideas.

Read: Rick Perry To California: “we don’t judge success on the number of people we have on public assistance.” »

Posted in Economy, GOP | 10 Comments | Trackback URL

Boehner Slams Obamacare Website “Scheduled Maintenance”

By William Teach October 5, 2013 – 8:06 am

No website is perfect. Things happen. My host, Dreamhost, has certainly had their share of issues over the years, from minor annoyances to huge outages. Of course, they, like all sorts of giant individual websites, like CNN, Fox News, Youtube, etc, rarely go down, especially for “planned maintenance”. Obamacare?

(The Hill) Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blasted plans to partially disable ObamaCare’s enrollment site for maintenance during non-peak hours this weekend as a sign of major flaws with the law.

“The news that [the] enrollment system is already going offline confirms that the launch of the president’s healthcare law has been an unmitigated disaster,” Boehner said in a statement Friday.

The comment followed tweets by several Republican leadership staffers mocking the decision from federal health officials and suggesting that it masks serious problems with healthcare.gov.

Boehner also criticized the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for refusing to ay how many people have successfully enrolled in coverage so far.

“This announcement is more proof that we need to delay the law and provide basic fairness, just as Republicans have called for. How can this administration tax individuals for not purchasing a product from a website that doesn’t even work?” Boehner said. Even the Washington Post has noticed that Exchange websites are mostly a disaster, especially Maryland, which was supposed to be a poster child. And

A few state exchanges are performing well. Connecticut officials threw themselves a party after a successful second day. Kentucky officials had a yellow sheet cake with “100,000” in white icing to mark the number of people who had completed the pre-screening process Wednesday.

Let me get this straight: Kentucky was celebrating people completing a process, not people actually signing up for insurance? Personally, I love how healthcare.gov says “Plus, see if you qualify for lower costs.”

They are supposedly going to take it off-line during off-peak hours to add “enhancements”. Because it’s not like they had 3 years and oodles of taxpayer money (wasn’t this supposed to be revenue neutral?) to get it right at launch.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Boehner Slams Obamacare Website “Scheduled Maintenance” »

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Students Really Psyched For This Divestment Movement

By William Teach October 4, 2013 – 3:25 pm

However, not so much about giving up their own fossil fuels or energy usage

(USA Today) If energy consumption continues to grow at its current rate, that’s when the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will cause permanent climate change, according to a new U.N. report.

That year stuck out to Daniel Sherrell, a senior at Brown University. He will be 49 then.

“Before then, members of Congress and the international community will have to swallow their hubris and make difficult decisions,” says Sherrell, a leader of the Brown Divest Coal Campaign, which advocates that Brown stop investing in the coal industry.

Strange, Sherrell and his group want Brown to give up a major revenue stream, but no mention of giving up their own cars. I wonder if all these folks would be willing to give up all their electricity sucking tech?

Ophir Bruck, a senior at the University of California-Berkeley and Fossil Free Campaign coordinator, hopes students can get the University of California system to commit to divestment by the end of the year.

However, he sees the Fossil Free campaign’s goals extending beyond divestment.

“A huge part of the campaign is to educate students and to just spread awareness among students, faculty, staff, alumni of climate change and the urgency with which we need to act,” Bruck says.

Here’s where it gets good, since Bruck, like so many other Leftists, is going to Power Shift 2013. In Pittsburgh. How will he and the roughly 10k other climahypocrites get there?

Also, notice the “spreading awareness” idiocy. Warmists still refuse to practice what they preach.

Read: Students Really Psyched For This Divestment Movement »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Climahypocrites, Energy, Liberal World | 8 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach October 4, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is a wonderful bad weather preventing bicycle with a reusable water bottle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jo Nova, with a post by Bob Tisdale noting 6 questions the media should be asking the IPCC on AR5.

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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

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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
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