Bad Weather Reducing Chevy Volt Reduced By $5,000

By William Teach August 6, 2013 – 3:05 pm

A desperate plea for someone to by this “car” so Chevy can lose more money or something

(USA Today) The Volt is getting a jolt — at least when it comes to price.

The slow selling newfangled plug-in car, which is supposed to the star of General Motors’ portfolio, is going to have $5,000 knocked off its list price. The 2014 Volt will now cost $34,995, including shipping, 12.5% less than last year’s model.

With a full $7,500 federal tax credit, the price is cut to $27,495. Some states have tax credits as well.

Or, you can purchase a fully loaded Honda Civic for less and be able to actually drive somewhere. Or, heck, a fully loaded Prius.

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Did FEC And IRS Collude In Targeting Conservative Groups?

By William Teach August 6, 2013 – 1:30 pm

To say that I’m shocked that CNN would publish this story is an understatement, but, hey, random act of journalism

The vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission told CNN on Monday he has seen numerous undisclosed e-mails between FEC staffers and the Internal Revenue Service that raise new questions about potential collusion between the two federal agencies in the alleged targeting of conservative political groups.

Don McGahn, a Republican FEC commissioner, said an investigator from his agency contacted Lois Lerner, the IRS employee at the center of the political storm now engulfing that agency.

He said the contact was made to discuss the status of one such conservative political advocacy group, the American Future Fund.

Shortly after Lerner was contacted, the IRS sent a questionnaire to the American Future Fund, McGahn added. (snip)

The answers, McGahn stressed, “could be benign (or) could be more sinister.”

True. And the Obama administration and those who work in the Executive Branch will do all they can to stonewall the investigation. That’s the base mode of Government, and certainly the modus operandi of Team Obama.

 

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If All You See…

By William Teach August 6, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil fossil fueled vehicle causing the planet to rotate slower, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is No Frakking Consensus, with a post wondering what a bad IPCC job would look like.

Read: If All You See… »

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Ezra Klein Wonders If Test Tube Meat Could Save Planet From Hotcoldwetdry

By William Teach August 6, 2013 – 9:16 am

I mentioned the test tube burger yesterday, with a hint about it supposedly being part of the fight against “climate change”. Here’s what it looks like

I’ve seen worse at the supermarket. Usually with a “manager’s sale” sticker on it covering up the “sell by” date. Anyhow, here’s climahysteric Ezra Klein

The most expensive burger ever made was served in London today. It cost more than $300,000 — thanks, Google’s Sergey Brin — and didn’t taste very good. But the texture was right, and it saved a cow. Maybe one day it can save the Earth.

That’s the real play behind the test-tube burgers. The hope, according to Dutch scientist Mark Post, who led the team, is that they can eventually help stop global warming.

The case for moving away from raising and slaughtering animals for food is typically portrayed in terms of animal welfare. But increasingly the argument is about planetary welfare: Meat is simply a huge, huge contributor to climate change, and it’s only going to get bigger as the billions of people in emerging economies begin demanding the meat-heavy diets they associate with wealth.

In this 2009 column, I laid out some of the numbers behind this debate. They’re worth thinking about today. The column is slightly edited from its original version.

Which leads into his 2009 opinion piece (he forgets to tell us what is slightly edited), a big whine about eating meat

According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. That’s larger than the entire transportation sector. Burgers, in other words, are doing more damage to the planet than SUVs.

Interestingly, despite mentioning cow burps and flatulence, the word “methane” appears nowhere. I wonder why? Anyhow, are we supposed to grow really expensive meat and kill off all the livestock?

Interestingly, our buddies at Grist aren’t that enthused by this development. They note that this “schmeat” will only be available for the 1st world, due to costs, even if it becomes competitive within 10-20 years (unlikely). It’s doused in antibiotics. Most likely has fewer nutrients. It’s virtually fat free, and meat needs a little bit of fat for flavor. Sounds like a winner!

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Virginia: Gun Crime Drops As Gun Sales Soar

By William Teach August 6, 2013 – 8:54 am

Well, who could have seen this coming

(Fox News) Amid calls nationwide for stricter gun control laws, Virginia is experiencing a unique trend: the state’s gun-related crime is declining but firearms sales are increasing.

Firearms sales rose 16 percent to a record 490,119 guns purchased from licensed gun dealers in 2012, according to sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

During the same period, major crimes committed with firearms dropped 5 percent to 4,378.

“This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don’t necessarily lead to more crime,” said Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs who specializes in research methods and criminology theory.

“It’s a quite interesting trend given the current rhetoric about strengthening gun laws and the presumed effect it would have on violent crimes,” Baker told the newspaper. “While you can’t conclude from this that tougher laws wouldn’t reduce crime even more, it really makes you question if making it harder for law-abiding people to buy a gun would have any effect on crime.”

Correct, we can’t necessarily conclude that the drop in violent crime is directly linked the large increase in gun sales, but we can sure infer it.

The original article is from the Richmond Times Dispatch, which notes

But Josh Horwitz, the leader of a national gun-control group, does not find the comparison of gun crime to legal gun sales particularly significant, and views any perceived correlation between the two sets of data as essentially meaningless.

“Guns sold incident to a background check are less likely to be involved in crimes than guns sold without a background check,” said Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “So the real question — which I don’t think we really know — is what’s the level of gun sales without a background check?

Horowitz inadvertently makes a great point: if government wants to go after guns, then it should go after criminals with guns, not curtail the 2nd Amendment rights of law abiding citizens, which is what Obama, Bloomberg, Horowitz, his group, and all these other liberal groups are pushing. The vast majority of guns are sold legally and with a background check amongst law abiding citizens. Criminals do not bother.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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Sony BDPS 5100 Sorta Review

By William Teach August 5, 2013 – 4:03 pm

As you might remember from about 2 weeks ago I mentioned that my Blu-ray player had died, so I got a new one. Well, because Gumball did this…

nag

..I decided to get to check out some others. Well, really, there were a few features I really wanted, such as volume on the remote. I ended up going with the Sony BDPS 5100, obtained at Walmart for $118. It’s not that I didn’t like the Philips, I still think it is an awesome value. I just wanted more. Plus, I was concerned with some of the reviews about 3D.

The Sony remote allows for volume control, as well as turning TV off and on. Also, supposedly will allow to change TV input source, but that never works with my Olevia by Syntax TV.

The 3D gets awesome reviews. The picture and sound quality are excellent. The way Sony has formatted the design keeps dust and dirt and spiders out of the optical drive. It’s Energy Star compliant. And it has multiple, and easy to find, buttons, though they’re still on top. DVDs load fast.

Another great feature is Sideview, an app that can be used to control the player, and other compliant Sony devices, from Droid devices. Up to a point. I’d like to see a bit more functionality, such as not just being able to start Pandora, but scroll through and pick the channel from the Droid.

The player also has an enormous amount of apps. Movies, music, weather, news, games … lots. I’ve watch many movies via Crackle. First time I’ve seen Stripes uncut and in R rated version in at least 20 years. Candy Stripers (horror) was bad. Godzilla 2000 was worse.

I cranked up some metal with Slacker. Used some YouTube. Test with VuDu was fast, no lag, even for HD. There are enough apps to make even an entitled liberal like John happy 🙂

You can also cruise the ‘net with it, though I probably never will.

Then there’s DLNA. With DNLA I’m able to browse movies, photos, and music on my Droids and laptop. I can also send same to the player. Took a big to figure it out, but, got it working. No true mirroring, but, oh well, I’d barely use it. It’s a nice feature, though, especially if you want peruse those really big vacation photos on a big screen.

Lots more, overall I’ll give it 4.5 out of 5.

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If All You See…

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

…is an world turned to drought, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Gay Patriot, who wonders why homicide laws are different for men and women

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What Say To A $300k Burger To Save Us From Bad Weather?

By William Teach August 5, 2013 – 12:42 pm

This sounds much like many of the Warmist prescriptions

(WRAL) For hamburgers that cost more than $300,000 to produce, you might expect fries and a shake too.

But this is no ordinary burger being served to two volunteer taste-testers in London on Monday. This meat was grown in a laboratory from stem cells of cattle.

Just to be clear, the did not use embryonic stem cells, which tend to be monumental failures

Mark Post, whose team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands developed the burger after five years of research, hopes that making meat in labs could eventually help solve the food crisis and fight climate change.

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Warmist: Hey, Maybe We Need The Same Type Of Sacrifice To Stop Bad Weather The Incas Used

By William Teach August 5, 2013 – 8:00 am

Funny thing is, the downfall of the Incas occurred around the same time the Little Ice Age got going

(Guardian) Although their empire existed for a scant 100 years before being cut short in 1533 by the arrival of the Spaniards, the Incas managed to create 26,000 miles of roads, ruled an empire of 10 million people and imposed their language and culture from one end of the Andes to the other. In a very real sense, the Incas were the “Romans” of the New World and, like the Romans, they were excellent administrators and empire builders. Like the Romans, however, they borrowed many aspects of their culture – from metallurgy and warfare and architecture to agriculture and animal husbandry and astronomy – from other, previous cultures.

Like the Romans, their empire died out as the climate turned cooler

In response to such natural phenomena, the Incas resorted to religion. In the Inca world, lightning, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, rain, weather and fertility were controlled by a panoply of gods. To survive in an unpredictable world, the Incas sought to form reciprocal relationships with their gods, just as they formed reciprocal relationships with one another, or with other tribes.

They performed quite a bit of human sacrifice of Other People in their religion

The Incas did their best to fathom what, at the time, was unfathomable – the violent, unpredictable catastrophes of nature which, in some cases, had ended cultures that preceded them. To their credit, the Incas did their best to ensure the survival of their people and empire by paying close attention to nature and doing their best to use every means at their disposal, including human sacrifice, to gain control over it.

Nowadays Warmist want Everyone Else to sacrifice, and, yeah, many of them want Other People, especially minorities in 3rd World nations to stop having kids.

The irony is that, more than 500 years after the Spaniards put an end to perhaps the most spectacular empire in the New World, not only are Andean and worldwide glaciers shrinking at unprecedented rates as the Earth heats up, altering and damaging native ecosystems, but the new cultures that have replaced the Incas seem apathetic, at best, in making any kind of sacrifice in order to gain control over a potentially self-created environmental disaster.

Wait, is writer Kerry MacQuarrie proposing human sacrifice to the Gods Of Gore in order to stop Bad Weather? Would anyone be surprised?

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Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Municipalities Look To Get Their Unionized Employees Of Cadillac Plans And Into Obamacare

By William Teach August 5, 2013 – 7:13 am

Remember the days when Obamacare was meant to be a way for the 30-45 million Americans with no health insurance to obtain health insurance? Good times, good times

(NY Times) Cities and towns across the country are pushing municipal unions to accept cheaper health benefits in anticipation of a component of the Affordable Care Act that will tax expensive plans starting in 2018.

The so-called Cadillac tax was inserted into the Affordable Care Act at the advice of economists who argued that expensive health insurance with the employee bearing little cost made people insensitive to the cost of care. In public employment, though, where benefits are arrived at through bargaining with powerful unions, switching to cheaper plans will not be easy.

I had to check to make sure I was actually on the NY Times website, where writer Kate Taylor best watch her back for highlighting that public unions have a dangerous, expensive, and incestuous relationship with Democrat politicians and appointees which provides more and more largess at the expense of the taxpayer. In the above case, it leads to what are considered Cadillac health insurance plans, which were supposedly only obtained by those Evil Rich People like Mitt Romney.

Cities including New York and Boston, and school districts from Westchester County, N.Y., to Orange County, Calif., are warning unions that if they cannot figure out how to rein in health care costs now, the price when the tax goes into effect will be steep, threatening raises and even jobs.

Well, that’s interesting: heavily Democrat/Liberal areas seem to be having a bit of a problem with promising too darned much to public unions.

Under the tax, plans that cost above a certain threshold in 2018 — $10,200 annually for individual plans and $27,500 for family plans, with slightly higher cutoffs for retirees and those in high-risk professions like law enforcement — will be taxed at 40 percent of their costs in excess of the limit. (The thresholds will rise with inflation after 2018.)

Those thresholds aren’t really that high. Quite often the health insurance offered by many companies can cost the company $8K-$12K per year per employee on average, which was why so many were switching to Health Savings Accounts, involving employees in sharing more of the cost, which would typically cost the employee $500-$1000 more per year, if they use the insurance.

Ninety-five percent of (NYC) city employees and 93 percent of retirees are in the two largest plans, which require employees to pay nothing toward their premiums. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation survey, the average contribution by public employees throughout the country is 12 percent for individual plans and 23 percent for family plans.

Maybe the definition of “Cadillac Plans” should be changed to note how much employees pay into a plan and what it offers. NYC, Boston, and many others are expected to see their plans hit the Cadillac threshold by 2018, and so far the unions are unwilling to make any accommodations, meaning either more costs will be passed on to the union employees (yeah, right) or to the taxpayer (most likely).

One thing that may happen is to push all employees, or at least new employees, into the Exchanges, meaning more and more people will be paying to subsidize public sector unions.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Municipalities Look To Get Their Unionized Employees Of Cadillac Plans And Into Obamacare »

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