Bummer: Slate Will No Longer Refer To Washington Redskins As Redskins

You know, because everyone looking for Redskins football coverage automatically goes to Slate first (and because having solved every world problem, Slate can now deal with this)

This is the last Slate article that will refer to the Washington NFL team as the Redskins.

I wasn’t aware of the first Slate article, because I’d generally go to CBS Sports, ESPN, or dozens of other sites regarding sports. Not that I’d look up Redskins news in the first place.  So, I’m generally not bummed, because I refer to them as the Deadskins. BTW, this article is by David Plotz, the editor of Slate.

I’m a lifelong fan of the team, and Snyder and his players should be justly proud of the way their team bridges black and white Washington

Well, if you find the name so racist/bigoted, you’d move on to a different team. Also, it’s funny how Plotz Blames Snyder, when the name goes back to 1937, and Snyder wasn’t born till 1964.

So while the name Redskins is only a bit offensive, it’s extremely tacky and dated—like an old aunt who still talks about “colored people” or limps her wrist to suggest someone’s gay.

Wait, I’m confused: I thought it was mega-huge offensive and people should be offended just to see the logo, and so bad that Slate will no longer use the name?

And what should replace Redskins? A D.C. city councilmember cleverly proposed “Redtails,” the nickname of the Tuskegee Airmen. It nods at the city’s African-American heritage, and would allow Snyder to keep a feather in the logo. If he doesn’t like that, he could call them the Snyders, a name that would sate even his ego. But here’s my choice: If the team’s star quarterback works out as well as Snyder hopes, there’s a perfect name that would allow the team to keep the feathers and the ferocity: the Washington Griffins.

I still prefer Deadskins. Or, how about “It’s OK, little buckaroos, there’s always next year?” But, I think that might be taken by the Cowgirls, er, boys.

Interestingly, Slate has no problem when Democrats, including (NMP) Obama, slur Conservatives.

Read: Bummer: Slate Will No Longer Refer To Washington Redskins As Redskins »

If All You See…

…is a drought world being overtaken by 500 feet of rising seas, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is 90Ninety Miles From Tyranny, with a post that cracks Obama’s czars

Read: If All You See… »

Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations By Time Period

Tom Nelson says “not to miss this”

He’s right. I’ve cut the chart in two below the fold so we can look at it in a larger format

Read More »

Read: Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations By Time Period »

Tom Harkin Proclaims Some Unknown Southern Senator Called Obama “Exotic”

Harkin’s apparently attempting to earn his race card, despite being whiter than 2 week old floater (if that’s too gross, just think whiter than cotton), along with pumping up the liberal base

(Des Moines Register) U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin provided some behind-the-scenes insight into the partisan animosity that continues to follow Barack Obama in his second term as president.

Harkin, a Democrat, met Wednesday morning with the Des Moines Register’s editorial board. Responding to a question from a columnist about why Republicans seemed determined to see Obama fail, he described a scene from the closed-door meeting among senators that took place last month in the Old Senate Chambers.

During that July 15 meeting – which concerned filibuster rules and included no press and no staff – one senator suggested his constituents still couldn’t identify with Obama.

“I’m not naming any names, but one senator got up from a southern state and said, ‘Well, you’ve got to understand that to my people down here, Obama seems like’ – he thought for a second and he said – ‘like he’s exotic.’”

A spokeswoman for Harkin declined to offer further detail on the exchange, noting that it occurred in a closed-door meeting with only senators present.

He’s not naming names, we’re just supposed to take his word for it that this actually occurred. And his spokeswoman won’t give further details, because it was behind closed doors, even though Tom was giddy enough to throw out this supposed racist tidbit, which is giving liberals, like at The Political Carnival, The Raw Story, comments in the story and at The Daily Caller, the race-baiting vapors

We kind of laughed at that – what’s that mean? Exotic? That he’s just exotic, that he doesn’t share our values and that kind of thing. It was kind of a strange comment.

Let’s see: born in Hawaii, father Kenyan, raised partially in Indonesia, then in Hawaii, and now is a guy who shares few values with roughly half the country, a half which Obama continuously demonizes and denigrates. I’m pretty sure no liberal actually gets to that paragraph before going off in moonbat rage.

Read: Tom Harkin Proclaims Some Unknown Southern Senator Called Obama “Exotic” »

WalMart Applauds The Nation For Finally Paying Its Interns The Minimum Wage

The far left leaning magazine The Nation has been a long time WalMart opposing group (like so many liberals), and has been calling WalMart out saying they need to pay their employees more. Because people who ring things up at a register somehow deserve the same wage as someone filing legal briefs. WalMart states that it pays it’s employees $12-$13 an hour on average. An outside group, IBISWorld, claims that the average associate makes $8.81 an hour.

The Nation recently posted an open letter to company CEO Mike Duke and the Walmart board of directors demanding that Walmart start paying its workers a minimum wage $12 an hour. The letter also includes an online petition that readers can sign.

Walmart is clearly growing tired of being a punching bag and poster child for low wages. So on Wednesday morning, Steven Restivo, a senior director of communications at Walmart, sent out a snarky email directed at The Nation under the subject line: “people who live in glass houses…”

The Nation—“America’s leading progressive print and online magazine”—recently encouraged its readers to sign an open letter demanding that Walmart increase wages to $12/hour and this article called our company one of the “biggest abusers of low-wage labor.”

In an ironic twist, ProPublica recently reported that starting this fall, “interns at the Nation Institute will be paid minimum wage for the first time in the history of the 30-year-old program.” As ProPublica noted, The Nation has been paying its full-time interns a weekly stipend of $150 per week—less than the current federal minimum wage rate of $7.25 per hour.

Is anyone truly stunned to learn that a far left organization whining about income inequality are themselves cheapskates? I’m sure, like with most Liberal hypocrites, whether it be paying more taxes, living the carbon neutral life, paying their employees well, The Nation will have some sort of excuse as to why they weren’t even paying their interns the minimum wage.

Most obviously, there is a difference between full-time Walmart employees, who are trying to support a family on their wages, and The Nation’s interns, who are there mostly for experience and exposure. According to the Nation Institute: “The difference here is that what The Nation has challenged Walmart on is low wages for people in perpetuity as their full-time employment. These are wages that are meant to support families working at Walmart with no end in sight. Our internship is an educational, time-limited engagement that provides a unique training experience for participants. They are wholly different issues.”

And there’s the excuse. Because interns shouldn’t make money to support their families or something. But, WalMart employees also have access to health insurance that starts at $17 a pay period, a 401K plan, and a 10% discount on merchandise, among others. 75% of the management team started as hourly associates. And they like women

Women make up more than 57% of our U.S. workforce, 27% of our corporate officers, and comprise 20% of our Board of Directors – outperforming the U.S. retail industry and Fortune 500 average.

Can The Nation say that? They can say that, with the wage boost, they are only hiring 10 interns instead of 12, which validates the notion that if a company pays more than the position is worth something has to be cut, which is usually either the number of hours worked or number of jobs.

There’s also a basic premise: no one should be applying for a basic job making low wages as a means to support a family. Of course, in the Obamaeconomy, what is is there?

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: WalMart Applauds The Nation For Finally Paying Its Interns The Minimum Wage »

DUmmy Wonders If “This Is The Final Question That America Is Asking Itself”

It’s been awhile since I’ve featured the DUmmies. Here’s one that amused me

I guess this is the final question that America is asking itself.

Does anyone have a right to a place to live, food for themselves and their family, clean water, an education for their child, or the benefit of representation in their own Government if it is not profitable for someone else?

If the answer is yes, that a person has a right to all of those things without concern that someone must profit from it for it to happen, then we have one hell of a lot of changes that must be made.

But, the answers, except for that last one, are “no.” Can you take someone else’s home, their food? No. There is no “right” to education.

But said DUmmy put it in terms of someone profiting. I always get a kick out of this, because, for one, these same lefties are posting using corporate made laptops, tablets, and smartphones, wearing corporate made clothes, living in some sort of domicile, using corporate owned Internet, all provided for because THEY made a profit doing whatever job they do.

Second, liberals are the least charitable. Study after study confirms this. Liberals are fine with giving away Other People’s money, but not their own. Even Democrat politicians are cheapskates. Until election time comes around.

Of course, most of the DUmmies were thrilled by this. But none are saying they will give up their own profit. Almost none of the liberals in Hollywood, music, sports, etc, are willing to give up tons of their own money. Except to elect Democrats. But not help others. Nor will they take paycuts. This is always for Someone Else.

Read: DUmmy Wonders If “This Is The Final Question That America Is Asking Itself” »

If All You See…

…is a drought world that will soon be swallowed by rising seas, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Bookworm Room, with a post noting that Obama would prefer that Americans die in terrorist attacks.

Read: If All You See… »

World Continues To Broil Or Something

No, seriously, despite there being, as the article notes, no warming in at least 10 years. This comes from one of the biggest “climate change” at the AP, Seth Borenstein, continuing his practice of activist journalism

World continues to broil, NOAA’s 2012 report on warming finds

A new massive federal study says the world in 2012 sweltered with continued signs of climate change. Rising sea levels, snow melt, heat buildup in the oceans, and melting Arctic sea ice and Greenland ice sheets, all broke or nearly broke records, but temperatures only sneaked into the top 10.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday issued a peer-reviewed 260-page report, which agency chief Kathryn Sullivan calls its annual “checking on the pulse of the planet.” The report, written by 384 scientists around the world, compiles data already released, but it puts them in context of what’s been happening to Earth over decades.

So, activism from the NOAA. I wonder if they noted the cool temperatures in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East last year? How about the cool in the Southern latitudes? How about Antarctica continuing to cool down? How about the dearth of landfalling tropical systems? Fewer tornadoes?

(National Climatic Data Center director Tom) Karl says surface temperatures haven’t risen in the last 10 years, but he notes that is only a blip in time due to natural variability. When looking at more scientifically meaningful time frames of 30 years, 50 years and more than 100 years, temperatures are rising quite a bit, Karl said. Since records have been kept in 1880, all 10 of the warmest years ever have been in the past 15 years, NOAA records show.

Two points: first, over the past 50 years we’ve seen “climate scientists” and media types concerned about a coming ice age, due to a typical short term variability last from the 1940’s to the late 1970’s, which then turned towards more warming, with a big uptick lasting from the late 1970’s to early 1990’s. Since 1990, though, there has only been an uptick of .28F, and .14F since 1997. Not something to actually freak out about. Overall, there’s really only been an uptick of 1.4F since the end of the Little Ice Age, which, again, is not that big of a deal compared to previous warm periods.

Second, perhaps Mr. Karl should review the data from his own NCDC, which shows that 3 of those record years (it appears that he is referring to US lower 48 records) occurred well before CO2 at 350ppm. These include 1934, 1921, and 1931.

Depending on which of four independent analyses are used, 2012 ranked the eighth or ninth warmest year on record, the report says. Last year was warmer than every year in the previous century, except for 1998 when a record El Nino spiked temperatures globally. NOAA ranks 2010 as the warmest year on record.

WTF? Eight or ninth warmest on record, but still warmer than every year in the 20th? BS.

While the report purposely doesn’t address why the world is warming, “the causes are primarily greenhouse gases, the burning of fossil fuels,” Arndt says.

So, the report is about advocacy, not science. I wonder how they’ll treat 2013, considering that it has been very cool around most of the globe….oh, right, I forgot, the heat is doing a Where’s Waldo in the deep oceans.

(BTW, we can’t necessarily blame the headline for the article on Borenstein, since headlines are most often written by someone else when it comes to news organizations)

More: NoTricksZone highlights that 2012 was one of the coolest of the 21st century, and provides much more in destroying the report

For example the NOAA writes that the Arctic sea ice extent last year reached a record low “during the satellite era“. However, the satellite era only goes back 33 years, and the NOAA couldn’t be bothered to tell readers that low Arctic sea ice also persisted in the 1950s and is all part of natural cycles, and is thus not “unprecedented“. Also read here.

Make sure to read the whole article.

Read: World Continues To Broil Or Something »

Surprise: Obamacare Way Behind In Testing IT Security

The trainwreck continues

(Reuters) The federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1

The missed deadlines have pushed the government’s decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general said in a report.

As a result, experts say, the exchanges might open with security flaws or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.

Hey, what’s a little bit of identity theft when we have socialized medicine to implement?

When people try to enroll in health insurance starting on October 1 for insurance plans taking effect in 2014, their identity, income and other information they furnish with their application will be funneled through a federal “data hub.”

The Exchanges basically want your life on record, so, surely there’s no chance for problems resulting from poor planning and an unworkable piece of legislation which has resulted in 20,000 pages (so far) of rules and regulations and guidance, right?

Despite the tight IT deadlines Obamacare faces, the 2002 federal law on information security might provide an important loophole. The requirement that CMS’s chief information officer make a “security authorization” decision does not mean the CIO has to conclude that the data hub is impregnable. He can decide that, despite identified security risks, the hub can operate.

Certainly this super awesome government which always follows the law and does everything it can to be forthright and safety concience would never use said loophole just so it can implement a program which is highly un-popular with the American people.

Read: Surprise: Obamacare Way Behind In Testing IT Security »

Obama Tells Leno “There Is No Domestic Spying Program”

Sadly, there are more than enough low information voters who’ll believe this tripe, as (NMP) Obama goes on Leno, which is apparently part of spending every waking minute working on the economy or something

(The Hill) President Obama on Tuesday defended the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance programs in a wide-ranging interview on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” arguing that the agency doesn’t target U.S. civilians.

“We don’t have a domestic spying program,” Obama said, according to the media pool report. “What we do have is some mechanisms that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack…That information is useful.”

Obama called the surveillance programs “a critical component to counterterrorism,” but acknowledged that they’ve “raised a lot of questions for people.”

There’s little point in noting that Senator/POTUS candidate raged against US anti-terrorism programs, especially what was referred to by the MSM as “domestic spying”, which was nothing of the sort, since the media will mostly ignore that Obama. Are the NSA and other alphabet soup agencies spying on citizens and people in the United States? Well, they sure have the capability to do this, the program has domestic parts, and they are storing huge amounts of information regarding phone calls, emails, and other communication methods. Whether they are using it to target people domestically and/or targeting specific people/companies, we do not really know. But anyone who thinks Government entities given these types of programs and this type of power won’t use it are deluded.

Stephen Kruiser notes

Terror alerts. Deepening concerns about an ever-watchful government. So the most powerful man in the world heads to Burbank to tell a late-night talk show host we can all calm down.

Let’s not forget a crummy economy, people dropping out of the jobs market in record numbers, GDP closer to 3rd World Shitholes developing nations, closing 19 embassies because of Islamic terrorists, real wages down, and America turning into a part time worker economy (among others), but Barry heads to Leno.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Obama Tells Leno “There Is No Domestic Spying Program” »

Pirate's Cove