WSJ: King Obama Suspends The Law

By William Teach July 9, 2013 – 8:45 am

Michael McConnell notes that (NMP) Obama is acting more like an English king of old

(Wall Street Journal) President Obama’s decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government.

Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.

This matter—the limits of executive power—has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II’s use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689—the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution—declared that “the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal.”

To make sure that American presidents could not resurrect a similar prerogative, the Framers of the Constitution made the faithful enforcement of the law a constitutional duty.

This is in terms, obviously, of Obama deciding he would suspend the employer mandate until January 1, 2015 despite the text of Obamacare stating that it must be enforced starting 1/1/2014. A president can, per the DOJ, decline to enforce laws he/she thinks are unconstitutional (which has never been tested in court), but cannot simply decline to enforce laws in the way they are written. POTUS cannot simply change the law.

This is not the first time Mr. Obama has suspended the operation of statutes by executive decree, but it is the most barefaced. In June of last year, for example, the administration stopped initiating deportation proceedings against some 800,000 illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before age 16, lived here at least five years, and met a variety of other criteria. This was after Congress refused to enact the Dream Act, which would have allowed these individuals to stay in accordance with these conditions. Earlier in 2012, the president effectively replaced congressional requirements governing state compliance under the No Child Left Behind Act with new ones crafted by his administration.

Imagine if this was George W. Bush doing this, or a President McCain or Romney…

Democrats too may acquiesce in Mr. Obama’s action, as they have his other aggressive assertions of executive power. Yet what will they say when a Republican president decides that the tax rate on capital gains is a drag on economic growth and instructs the IRS not to enforce it?

McConnell goes on to mention, regarding “immigration reform”, what’s the point when POTUS (specifically Obama) could arbitrarily decide not to bother enforcing parts of the law he hates, something many pundits, including myself, have noted after Obama decided to un-Constitutionally decided to suspend the employer mandate.

It’s rather serendipitous that Obama would decide to ignore the law so near Independence Day.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: WSJ: King Obama Suspends The Law »

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Is “Climate Change” Really The World’s Biggest Problem?

By William Teach July 8, 2013 – 7:53 pm

Alex B. Berezow says “not by a long shot”

(Real Clear Science) It’s particularly trendy among politicians and members of the media to be worried about climate change. When President Obama recently spoke before a crowd in Berlin, he said that climate change “is the global threat of our time.”

But that’s not true. Just a cursory glance around the world reveals that, given the enormous problems facing our planet, it would be surprising if climate change cracked a list of the top 10 immediate concerns.

As I discussed in my book Science Left Behind, the single biggest threat facing humanity is poverty. That’s a mundane topic; it’s neither sexy nor trendy, but it’s nonetheless true.

1.3 billion have absolutely no power. People in poverty have little access to power. Nor proper healthcare. Potable water. Good food. Yet, Warmists want to make sure that these people in poverty see huge sums of money wasted on alternative energy projects that those in poverty still can’t afford.

Basically, what the average person in the Westernized world considers to be a big problem is rarely aligned with reality. Instead, our concerns are more of a reflection of what our culture and the media say our concerns should be.

Worrying about “climate change” is a 1st World problem.

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Warmist: “Climate Change” Threatens Our Very Freedom Or Something

By William Teach July 8, 2013 – 2:15 pm

Here’s Al Gore’s Climate Reality CEO Maggie Fox providing yet another July 4th rant about fossil fuels. Apparently she wants everyone to stop breathing (via Tom Nelson)

Declaring Our Independence from Carbon Pollution

Last week, I watched President Obama stand up to the fossil fuel industry and all their friends in Congress and for future generations as he outlined his national Climate Action Plan. The speech was clear sighted on both the core problem of carbon pollution and the fact we’re already paying for it in spades. It was bold in following through on a promise to take action if Congress failed. Most important, though, this was the first time in a generation when a U.S. president officially broke the silence on climate change with a real plan.

Perhaps Ms. Fox should tell Obama, and Gore, to stop taking fossil fueled trips around the world.

To put it another way, it’s up to us. If we want to solve climate change, we have to stand up and get involved. We have to talk with our friends, families and networks, and help them understand the truth of the crisis, how it affects them and what we can do to solve it. Then, together we have to make our leaders listen.

Strange. There’s nothing in there about “hey, us Warmists need to practice what we preach”.

As a nation, we’ve always risen to the challenge, and today, this looks to be one of the greatest of them all. Our freedom to make the life we want really is at stake here, threatened by seas that would swallow towns and extreme weather that’s hitting us harder, more often, and with higher costs than ever before.

Idiocy and scaremongering based on lies and and absence of science. But, you know, our entire freedom is at stake despite a statistically insignificant rise in temperature over the last 15+ years even as CO2 levels have risen.

Read: Warmist: “Climate Change” Threatens Our Very Freedom Or Something »

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 8, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is a world turned into a desert because Someone Else refused to take public transit, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Capitalist Preservation, with a post on getting over this “democratically elected” claptrap.

Read: If All You See… »

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Hey, Kids, Tell Your Parents To Stop Driving You Around In Fossil Fueled Vehicles

By William Teach July 8, 2013 – 10:53 am

Oh, wait, no, that’s not what Warmist Scott Vrooman wants. Instead, he provides some handy dandy tips on how all the snowflakes can talk to their parents about “climate change”

I don’t expect public opinion on climate change will be swayed by columnists and pundits preaching to their choirs. Those who want to ignore the vast scientific evidence on the subject have likely already skipped to the comment section below to try to convince you that since I’m not shouting these things naked from a wooden hut in the middle of a bog, I’m a hypocrite and deserve to be ignored.

Um, well, yeah. If you’re not, you’re a hypocrite. But, then, 99.9% of Warmists are hypocrites.

For those still reading, I have a suggestion. Most of us don’t have millions of dollars to go toe-to-toe with the disinformation campaign being waged by the oil and gas industry. But most of us do have living parents. So let’s talk to them about climate change. Because if we can’t convince the people who love us more than anything in the world to take action on climate, who can we convince?

No, Warmists have the backing of governments with deeper pockets along with all sorts of Liberal groups and donors. But, that’s a cute strawman you’ve built. Anyhow, here’s Scott’s ideas

  1. Speak from a place of love and compassion, not anger or self-righteousness. (side note on self-righteousness: if you’ve ever used the arrogant, poisonous term “sheeple,” please eliminate it from your vocabulary, you’re making everything worse) (unlike Scott, who went for the disinformation campaign garbage)
  2. Make it clear that the topic of climate change is inseparable from the well-being of their children and grandchildren. (instead, we should leave them with trillions and trillions of debt and give government more and more control of their lives)
  3. Share a couple of informative articles on the topic. Bill McKibben’s landmark article in Rolling Stone, while harrowing, is concise and very readable. This NASA primer is also very good. There’s no need to overwhelm them with data. If they want more information you can point them towards it. The most important thing for them to understand is that on our current path we may no longer have a climate that allows for stable, secure societies within the lifetimes of today’s children. (oh, good, scaremongering and links to unhinged and hysterical articles, one of which is by a guy who has lots of money at stake to keep the “climate change” train rolling)
  4. Once these distressing facts are laid out, make clear that you aren’t blaming them for this. Your parents likely made all of their decisions with a strong sense of morality and social responsibility, and could only make those decisions based on the information they had at the time. But now that you have provided this new information, talk about how it obligates them, and all of us, to behave in new ways. (well, that’s strange, because Warmists have so far refused to behave in new ways. Hey, moms and dads, tell you kids that from now on they have to walk everywhere and that they can no longer have all that technology which sucks power. See if they still give a damn about “climate change”)
  5. Encourage them to buy environmentally-friendly goods and services as much as possible. Talk to them about divestment from fossil fuels. But given the urgency and enormity of the problem, also make clear that this will not be enough. This is a challenge that requires us all to act as citizens, not just as consumers. (see my response for #4)
  6. Now comes the hardest part. If your parents want to align their actions with their concern for their children’s and grandchildren’s futures, they may need to change the way they vote (!!!). Any politicians (even good-looking ones) not advocating for drastic reductions in carbon emissions have, at best, not accepted the facts about climate change. At worst, they are knowingly and cynically sacrificing the future for their own wealth and power. (and there it is, the real reason, getting the parents to vote for Democrats. This whole thing is political)

This is similar to the 1st World Problem of parents talking to their kids about hotcoldwetdry. Fortunately, an entire generation will soon graduate having experienced no statistically significant warming.

Read: Hey, Kids, Tell Your Parents To Stop Driving You Around In Fossil Fueled Vehicles »

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NY Times: What Abortion Needs Is The Face Of Freedom Or Something

By William Teach July 8, 2013 – 8:07 am

I’ll never understand how abortion became one of the sacraments for Liberals, how they push for unfettered abortion access with no regulations. This is the same group which wants more and more restrictions on gun ownership, despite there actually being a Constitutional Amendment in support of gun rights. Back during the debate post Sandy Hook I asked if Liberals would support any common sense restrictions on abortion: the answer, as we see, is “no”. I offered a reasonable compromise, Democrats would not support it. North Carolina has passed some common sense legislation that is meant to protect women, yet liberals are against something simple like abortion clinics having to be treated as outpatient centers…it’s not like “doctors” are yanking a fetus out of a woman or something.

Anyhow, here’s Beth Merfish, who seems super-duper proud that her mother had an abortion

My mother chose to abort her first pregnancy, in 1972. She and my father, who celebrated 40 years of marriage on Jan. 6 this year, met as undergraduates at the University of Texas, Austin. They got engaged. Then my mother became pregnant. She was 20, and he was 21.

They knew they were thoroughly unprepared to be parents, but abortion was illegal in Texas at the time (unless a woman’s life was at risk). This was the year before the United States Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, a case originating in Texas, affirmed a woman’s right to have an abortion until the fetus was viable.

So the baby had to pay for the failure of Beth’s parents to practice responsible, protected sex, leading to a pregnancy that was apparently “inconvenient” for her parent’s lifestyle.

Until recently, fear of shame has kept her quiet about her experience, even as she passionately, publicly supported reproductive freedom. This is the first time we’ve discussed her abortion in public.

Beth discusses the abortion as if it was something to be proud of. Liberals really are sick, demented people.

What the movement for reproductive rights needs is for the faces of freedom to emerge from the captivity of shame. To my mother’s generation, I ask: Speak openly about the choices you have made. To all women: ask your mothers, grandmothers, godmothers, aunts, sisters, daughters and partners about their reproductive histories. Show that abortion has myriad faces: those of women we love, respect and cherish. You have the power to cement in the minds of your communities and families the importance of reproductive freedom. You have made decisions that are private, even anguishing, but the weight of this political moment demands that you shed light on those decisions.

These people are shameless. Having an abortion is nothing to be proud of, and should be kept private. Having an abortion (except in cases of rape or incest) shows that the mother engaged in reckless sexual conduct and now one of God’s children has to pay the price.

The opposition is frightening, as more states try to restrict abortion, but there is tremendous power and safety in numbers. You are part of a society of women who have been incredibly courageous; I ask humbly for yet another show of that bravery.

What’s frightening is that these abortion supporters will not accept any measures. They won’t allow restrictions on late term abortions, abortions after 20 weeks, parental notification, heck, even requiring that a sonogram be taken and having a miniscule 24 hour cool down period is too much for abortion supporters. Requiring women to pay for their own abortions and disallowing federal funding? To hear abortion supporters, this is like chaining women to the stove.

Having an abortion is not courageous: it shows that these women (and the men who support abortion on demand) should be treated like the mental children they are. They do not have the mental makeup to be allowed within adult society, they have no adult responsibility. It is not courageous to kill the unborn. How did it come to thinking that having an abortion and talking about it like one would mention removing a cyst is courageous and brave? These people are sick and disgusting.

Read: NY Times: What Abortion Needs Is The Face Of Freedom Or Something »

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As People Complain About Student Loans, Don’t Forget: Obamacare

By William Teach July 8, 2013 – 7:29 am

Rarely a day goes by without one of the big news sites complaining in some form or fashion about the coming hike in the student loan percentage. It could be an elected politician, a student group, or Obama, or simply the news outlet. Like today in The Politico

Congress returns to Washington this week groping for a way to retroactively fix a high-profile doubling of some federal student loan rates.

The rate for new subsidized loans shot up from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1 after divisions among Senate Democrats made finding a solution untenable. Now with the bright lights of the immigration bill off the upper chamber, student loan rates take center stage.

In the days since the missed deadline, Washington’s political apparatus has been a muddle of messaging. House Republicans are blasting Senate Democrats for not passing a bill as the lower chamber has done, albeit one that President Barack Obama has threatened to veto. And lawmakers from both parties are now using the #DontDoubleMyRate hashtag on Twitter, first popularized by Obama at the height of last year’s presidential campaign.

Democrats in the Senate are angling for a 1 year extension of the 3.4% rate. Why not a permanent extension? Remember this?

So, here we are — with a majority of Americans feeling distinctly un-American as a partisan takeover of health care was engineered last weekend. But do Americans realize that Congress just took over student loans as well? Unlikely.

Now, not only will government increasingly be making decisions about individuals’ health care, but students will also have to deal exclusively with the government to get the financing they need for college. The government will be in charge of the delivery of $1 trillion in federal student loans over the next 10 years. That means 19 million students will have no where to call but to 1-800-DEPT-OF-ED. — I’m sure the calls will be handled in the order in which they were received. Good luck with that. Competition and choice have been taken away in the student loan market.  Let’s face it, this experiment can only end badly.

Government money has been mostly backing student loans since the 1960’s, but Obamacare went and removed the private sector in terms of payouts and funding (some claim that it completely disallows private education loans). Oh, and then there’s this

Two years ago, Obamacare was passed. As part of the unconstitutional monstrosity, the Democrats introduced a nationalization of the college student loan program which was used to boost the phony revenues the federal government will supposedly realize through Obamacare; in other words, it was a gimmick to make it look like Obamacare would reduce the deficit (long since debunked). (There’s more; read this 2010 piece by Tim Carney.)

Obamacare increased the interest percent to 6.8% in the first place as a way of increasing revenue to fund Obamacare and help the CBO score. Then, in order to patronize students with elections coming up, the rate was lowered (the gov borrows the money at 2.8% and then lends it at 3.4%? In what world does that make sense?) So the 6.8% rate was not a bug, but a necessary feature. If students want to blame anyone, they can blame Obama and the Democrats, who supported Obamacare, voted for it, signed it into law, and never bothered to read it.

As a sidebar, let’s note that The Government doesn’t restrict loans in other sectors. These same students can pay up to 24.99% in interest in North Carolina (in some small cases, 27.50%). Credit cards can be much higher than the student loan rates. Motorcycles, small business loans, etc can be at higher rates. Why are student loans treated differently? These are folks with no income and there is no guarantee that the loans will be paid back. And the taxpayer is left on the hook so that students can get a degree and in the Obamaeconomy perhaps get a low paying part time job, again thanks to Obamacare.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: As People Complain About Student Loans, Don’t Forget: Obamacare »

Posted in Barry Obama, Democrats, Healthcare | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Watcha Reading?

By William Teach July 7, 2013 – 7:53 pm

Happy Books! Last Sunday I mentioned I had started The Icarus Void by CK Burch. Made it about half way through, and it just became dull. The plot plodded along. So, moved on to Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Story by Ian Rob Wright, a follow up to Sea Sick. A good book with an ending somewhat similar to the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead, from a British point of view.

Started on The Shores Of The Dead Book One, and quickly gave it up. Misspellings and, worse, improperly placed punctuation. Lord knows, I’m not perfect when it comes to either, but when reading a story it makes it difficult to go with the flow. I can deal with some poor grammer, but commas in the wrong place stop the flow.

Took up The Final Winter by Ian Rob Wright. What if it started snowing? And wasn’t stopping? And was happening all over the world? And it was becoming colder and colder? And what if there was something out there in the snow? Enjoying the hell out of it.

Also, as I’ve mentioned for the past few weeks, I’ve also been slowly reading The Mad, Mad, Mad World Of Climatism. I finally finished it, and will provide a longer review/synopsis on my next day off, so as not to rush it, but, let me say that this should be the one book that every Warmist, and those on the fences, should read. Heck, even if you do not buy into “climate change”, you should read it. The facts and figures, along with the history, of “climate change” is put in an excellent format that anyone can easily understand. I should finish it this week, not that much left. You should buy it. Still haven’t gotten around to reviewing it. My Bad.

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First Amendment Hating Warmist Unintentionally Highlights That Global Warming Is Miniscule

By William Teach July 7, 2013 – 4:09 pm

The original article actually comes from Dana Nuccitelli, who is an environmental scientist and climate blogger for Skeptical Science and The Guardian, at Skeptical Science. I found this over at George Soros funded Climate Progress, both of which claim that “Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming”. The Climate Progress article starts out with this chart

So, from decade of the 1880’s thru the 2000’s the global temperature has risen…..0.79C. Why is this in any way scary? Cause for unhinged alarm? Cause to spend trillions on whatever pet cause Progressives have that is supposed to reduce Bad Weather? Cause to institute a cap and trade system? Destroy the global economy? Destroy the US economy? Restrict people in 3rd world nations from having the same power and lives that 1st Worlders have? The Earth has gone through many warm periods, preceded and followed by cool periods. If we’re looking at the Holocene, the Modern Warm Period is more akin to eating mild hot wings: much ado over nothing.

Then we get to

JR: The Washington Post insists on publishing un-fact-checked anti-science columnists like Charles Krauthammer. And so while 2010 was the hottest year on record and the 2000s the hottest decade on record, we are subject to nonsense like “Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years.” Never mind that ocean warming, Arctic ice loss, and sea level rise have accelerated.

That’s far left Progressive Joe Romm deciding that Free Speech and a Free Press are Bad Things. As far as “anti-science” goes, hot doesn’t equate to anthropogenic causation. Global temps have been statistically insignificant for 15+ years. Oceans are barely warming, despite the out of control yammering by Warmists. Oceans rise has not accelerated. The Arctic is actually doing quite well this year.

The thrust of the article by Nuccitelli is that the warmth is disappearing into the oceans, including the deep oceans. This is simply an extension of the Warmist attempt to protect their cult as the land temperatures have essentially flatlined despite CO2 continuing to rise, instead of them saying “hey, um, yeah, we were wrong about the whole anthropogenic thing”. The thing these never-met-science Warmists forget to point out is that if 90% of the warmth is going into the oceans (the actual figure they claim is 93.4%), then said oceans would be having a much, much, much bigger affect on land, since oceans provide one of the main drivers (along with the Sun, vulcanism, other natural processes) of climate. And if the oceans are warming, what is the most likely cause? More solar activity along with vulcanism? Or someone driving and SUV?

Read: First Amendment Hating Warmist Unintentionally Highlights That Global Warming Is Miniscule »

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

If All You See…

By William Teach July 7, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is a field (far from your home) that would look fantastic with a bunch of solar panels, you might just be a Warmsist

The blog of the day is Wizbang, with a post highlighting more proof that Democrats hate the Constitution.

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