Thursday, March 27, 2014

Fairness Wins in Maryland

Congratulations to all who fought so hard for this.

From MSNBC:
The Maryland House of Delegates on Thursday approved a bill banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity, positioning the Old Line State on track to join 17 others and the District of Columbia in protecting the rights of transgender individuals.

Senate Bill 212, otherwise known as the Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014, made it through the Democratic-controlled House by a vote of 82-57, after more than two hours of floor debate. It passed the state Senate earlier this month, 32-15, and now heads to the desk of Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley for signature. Maryland legislature passes transgender equality bill
The GOP legislators dragged their feet all day, debating things that didn't need debating, until a vote just couldn't be stalled any longer.

This campaign had some nostalgic moments, when the shower-nuts made their dire predictions of perverted men going into ladies restrooms and showers claiming to be women. (And see THIS debunking of that myth every which way but sideways.) But fair treatment for people with nonbinary or nontraditional gender identities is an easy sell. These are people who are discriminated against every day, and our society is better off in every way if we invite them into the tent with the rest of us. There is simply nothing gained by discriminating.
Once enacted, SB 212 will protect transgender Marylanders from labor, housing, public accommodation, and employment discrimination. Though Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard County, and Montgomery County already provided such protections, the 2001 statewide anti-discrimination law only included protections based on sexual orientation.

“What we are about to do today is important,” said Democratic Del. Maggie McIntosh, as reported by the Washington Blade. “This is an important group of people today who frankly we left out 11 years ago. They’re beat up. They’re ridiculed. They are suffering and they need to hold their head up high just like I do.”

Recent polls found wide support for the bill’s protections, as well as necessity. According to a 2009 survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 54% of transgender Marylanders reported being harassed in places of public accommodation, such as restaurants, stores, and movie theaters. Seventy-one percent of those surveyed in a March Goucher Poll said they favored including gender identity protections in the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
Governor O'Malley will sign the bill. He issued this statement: “I’d like to congratulate and thank Senator Rich Madaleno, Delegate Luke Clippinger, Equality Maryland and the Human Rights Campaign on yet another victory for inclusion and openness in our State ” said Governor Martin O’Malley. “ We’re proud to stand with these leaders, the LGBT community, and other allies to complete this major piece of unfinished business — ensuring that everyone is protected from discrimination under the law. I look forward to signing this bill.”

High five, everybody!

199 Comments:

Anonymous just ask Nate Silver said...

transgender that blend in have no problem

those that don't should

all anti-discrimination laws discriminate by creating a special class that enjoys the right to burden others with proof

"From MSNBC:"

quote 'em while you can

"A new study from the Pew Research Journalism Project that incorporates Nielson ratings data shows that MSNBC is bleeding viewers and revenue at a pace that outstrips the rest of the cable news market. In 2013 the left-wing network lost a staggering 24 percent of its prime-time audience. On the revenue side of things, while Fox and CNN are growing, MSNBC is losing income."

March 28, 2014 12:09 AM  
Anonymous ask Nate Silver said...


Since the start of the year, when it at last became clear that an ill-designed website was merely the least of Obamacare's problems, Democrats have been on a search for a plausible villain on whom this sad state of affairs can be blamed.

E.J. Dionne blames Republican nastiness, but he blames this for everything.

Alec MacGillis at the New Republic blames Republican governors who rejected the expansion of Medicaid: "Obamacare is hurting Democratic candidates because Republicans are hurting Obamacare," runs his article's headline. Well, that explains why the exchanges in Maryland, Oregon and Colorado are all in such chaos: If only they had Democrats in the state houses, who got with the program. Oh wait -- they do have them. So much for that theory.

But in real life, it’s not hard to find some real culprits, in plain sight and right under our nose.

Blame the progressives, who thought a financial collapse was too small a thing on which to waste a good crisis, and thought the time was right to revisit their wish list and dredge up an old cause for which there was no public clamor. The last time, when the Clintons tried it, it did not end well.

Blame President Obama, whose swelled head made him want to do big things too quickly. Blame his hubris, when he decided to ignore and then override a very strong wave of intense opposition and then use a loophole to circumvent the very last roadblock, which the Constitution and Scott Brown's election had managed to put in his way.

Blame the "experts" he named, with sterling credentials and no sense whatsoever, who thought the perverse incentives they built into the bill would be no drag at all on the larger economy; that the 6 million to 10 million people they forced out of their plans in the first phase of the rollout would have no impact at all on public opinion; and that untold numbers of people could be arbitrarily moved from one set of doctors and hospitals into another with the relative ease with which consumers switch brand names and markets.

But patients understand that having one special doctor can mean the difference between cancer caught at stage one or stage three, or treatment begun before and not when a stroke happens; a change in kind and in cost from one’s usual shopping experience. Medical care isn’t a steak one can buy at a number of markets. Obama and his experts had failed to see that.

Blame Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who kept it alive so it could die on its own in full view of the public; blame House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who pushed for the loophole; blame the Democrats who knew this was wrong and said nothing about it; and blame too the pundits, from E.J. Dionne on down to the lowliest bloggers, who kept up the drumbeat once Brown was elected to the Senate that his win should mean nothing at all.

"Pass. The. Damn. Bill." was their mantra, repeated again and again over numerous bylines, with the very same words of advice: No one would care how the bill passed once it was over. No price would be paid for stiffing the public. Obama would emerge from this stronger than ever. All of it certain, and all of it wrong.

Yes, there are people to blame for it all, but not the ones who foresaw and who warned what would happen. And so we can say to these panicking Democrats: Blame. Your. Damn. Selves.

March 28, 2014 7:18 AM  
Anonymous global warming is no biggie said...

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will shortly publish the second part of its latest report, on the likely impact of climate change. Government representatives are meeting with scientists in Japan to sex up—sorry, rewrite—a summary of the scientists' accounts of storms, droughts and diseases to come. But the actual report is less frightening than its predecessor seven years ago.

The 2007 report was riddled with errors about Himalayan glaciers, the Amazon rain forest, African agriculture, water shortages and other matters, all of which erred in the direction of alarm. This led to a critical appraisal of the report-writing process from a council of national science academies, some of whose recommendations were simply ignored.

Others, however, hit home. According to leaks, this time the full report is much more cautious and vague about worsening cyclones, changes in rainfall, climate-change refugees, and the overall cost of global warming.

It puts the overall cost at less than 2% of GDP for a 2.5 degrees Centigrade (or 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature increase during this century. This is vastly less than the much heralded prediction of Lord Stern, who said climate change would cost 5%-20% of world GDP in his influential 2006 report for the British government.

The forthcoming report apparently admits that climate change has extinguished no species so far and expresses "very little confidence" that it will do so. There is new emphasis that climate change is not the only environmental problem that matters and on adapting to it rather than preventing it. Yet the report still assumes 70% more warming by the last decades of this century than the best science now suggests. This is because of an overreliance on models rather than on data in the first section of the IPCC report—on physical science—that was published in September 2013.

In this space (WSJ) on Dec. 19, 2012, I forecast that the IPCC was going to have to lower its estimates of future warming because of new sensitivity results. (Sensitivity is the amount of warming due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.) "Cooling Down Fears of Climate Change" (Dec. 19), led to a storm of protest, in which I was called "anti-science," a "denier" and worse.

The IPCC's September 2013 report abandoned any attempt to estimate the most likely "sensitivity" of the climate to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The explanation, buried in a technical summary not published until January, is that "estimates derived from observed climate change tend to best fit the observed surface and ocean warming for [sensitivity] values in the lower part of the likely range." Translation: The data suggest we probably face less warming than the models indicate, but we would rather not say so.


March 28, 2014 7:36 AM  
Anonymous we're not that sensitive said...

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a London think tank, published a careful survey of all the reliable studies of sensitivity on March 5. The authors are British climate scientist Nic Lewis (who has no academic affiliation but a growing reputation since he discovered a glaring statistical distortion that exaggerated climate sensitivity in the previous IPCC report) and the Dutch science writer Marcel Crok. They say the IPCC's September report "buried good news about global warming," and that "the best observational evidence indicates our climate is considerably less sensitive to greenhouse gases than climate scientists had previously thought."

Messrs. Lewis and Crok argue that the average of the best observationally based studies shows the amount of immediate warming to be expected if carbon dioxide levels double after 70 years is "likely" to be between one and two degrees Centigrade, with a best estimate of 1.35C (or 2.4F). That's much lower than the IPCC assumes in its forthcoming report.

In short, the warming we experienced over the past 35 years—about 0.4C (or 0.7F) if you average the measurements made by satellites and those made by ground stations—is likely to continue at about the same rate: a little over a degree a century.

Briefly during the 1990s there did seem to be warming that went as fast as the models wanted. But for the past 15-17 years there has been essentially no net warming (a "hiatus" now conceded by the IPCC), a fact that the models did not predict and now struggle to explain. The favorite post-hoc explanation is that because of natural variability in ocean currents more heat has been slipping into the ocean since 2000—although the evidence for this is far from conclusive.

None of this contradicts basic physics. Doubling carbon dioxide cannot on its own generate more than about 1.1C (2F) of warming, however long it takes. All the putative warming above that level would come from amplifying factors, chiefly related to water vapor and clouds. The net effect of these factors is the subject of contentious debate.

March 28, 2014 7:39 AM  
Anonymous watch out for killer bees and give me grant money said...

In climate science, the real debate has never been between "deniers" and the rest, but between "lukewarmers," who think man-made climate change is real but fairly harmless, and those who think the future is alarming. Scientists like Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Richard Lindzen of MIT MITD +47.69% have moved steadily toward lukewarm views in recent years.

Even with its too-high, too-fast assumptions, the recently leaked draft of the IPCC impacts report makes clear that when it comes to the effect on human welfare, "for most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers," such as economic growth and technology, for the rest of this century. If temperatures change by about 1C degrees between now and 2090, as Mr. Lewis calculates, then the effects will be even smaller.

Indeed, a small amount of warming spread over a long period will, most experts think, bring net improvements to human welfare. Studies such as by the IPCC author and economist Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University in Britain show that global warming has probably done so already. People can adapt to such change—which essentially means capture the benefits but minimize the harm. Satellites have recorded a roughly 14% increase in greenery on the planet over the past 30 years, in all types of ecosystems, partly as a result of man-made CO2 emissions, which enable plants to grow faster and use less water.

There remains a risk that the latest science is wrong and rapid warming will occur with disastrous consequences. And if renewable energy had proved by now to be cheap, clean and thrifty in its use of land, then we would be right to address that small risk of a large catastrophe by rushing to replace fossil fuels with first-generation wind, solar and bioenergy. But since these forms of energy have proved expensive, environmentally damaging and land-hungry, it appears that in our efforts to combat warming we may have been taking the economic equivalent of chemotherapy for a cold.

Almost every global environmental scare of the past half century proved exaggerated including the population "bomb," pesticides, acid rain, the ozone hole, falling sperm counts, genetically engineered crops and killer bees. In every case, institutional scientists gained a lot of funding from the scare and then quietly converged on the view that the problem was much more moderate than the extreme voices had argued. Global warming is no different.

March 28, 2014 7:39 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was in Lyon in November. I went to use the bathroom at the Tourist center. You go into the building - and there are sinks and then stalls with doors. No mens, no womens- just stalls with doors that lock. No urinals either. A man came out of the stall next to the one I was entering- so what?

Andrea(Hi, Jim!)

March 28, 2014 8:37 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Cafe Asia in DC has the same arrangement. I'll admit to being a little startled when I first realized it.

March 28, 2014 9:36 AM  
Anonymous More right wing crap said...

Chris Christie Clears Chris Christie Of Any Wrongdoing In Bridgegate Scandal

Per a report in The New York Times on Monday, a legal team hired directly by Chris Christie’s office performed a review of the George Washington Bridge scandal and found the New Jersey Governor completely innocent of any wrongdoing. The review of the scandal was conducted by Randy M. Mastro, who just so happened to serve as New York City’s deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani has been one of the embattled Christie’s biggest supporters and cheerleaders throughout the fallout of his many controversies these past few months.

Mastro’s law firm was paid $1 million in legal fees to conduct the audit. While they pointed out that they had unlimited access to files and phones records, and that they were able to conduct at least 70 interviews with various people in the Governor’s office and administration, they did not speak with either Bridget Kelly or David Wildstein, the two most central figures in this scandal. Another person who was not interviewed was Christie’s former aide and campaign manager, Bill Stephen.

March 28, 2014 9:44 AM  
Anonymous ask Nate Silver said...

here in America, we separate the bathrooms by gender and include both genders in any arrangement called marriage

but we do often have continental breakfast, so there's that

March 28, 2014 9:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chris Christie Clears Chris Christie

no one cares

when he hugged Obama a week before the election and blamed global warming on the storm, he made sure he'd have no lasting friends in the Repub party

that made him a media celebrity for a spell but they turned on him when it looked like he might beat Hillary

now there's no one who cares to defend the blowhard

man without a party

March 28, 2014 9:51 AM  
Anonymous The Christian Gender Police said...


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/girl-banned-school-acting-boy-article-1.1735185

Virginia girl, 8, banned from Christian school for 'acting like a boy'

Sunnie Kahle dons T-shirts, sneakers and short hair, but her look didn’t meet the standards of the Timberlake Christian School, which sent a letter home to her grandparents telling them she would not be re-enrolled if she didn’t adjust her style and behavior. So her grandparents pulled her from the institution and she now attends public school.

An 8-year-old girl was banned from re-enrolling at her Christian school in Virginia because she doesn't act feminine.

Short-haired Sunnie Kahle was reportedly told she would be refused enrollment at Timberlake Christian School next year if she didn't stop dressing like a boy.

A letter sent to her grandparents Doris and Carroll Thompson — who are her legal guardians — said fellow students were confused as to whether she was a boy or a girl.

It allegedly reminded them that the school could refuse to admit a student "if that student is condoning sexual immorality, practicing a homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity."

Yeah, she's 8, she's got short hair, and she's a threat to Christians.

You GO girl!

March 28, 2014 11:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Public support for President Barack Obama's health care law is languishing at its lowest level since passage of the landmark legislation four years ago, according to a new poll.

The Associated Press-GfK survey finds that 26 percent of Americans support the Affordable Care Act.

Gwen Sliger of Dallas illustrates the prevailing national mood. Although a Democrat, she's strongly opposed to Obama's signature legislation.

"I like the idea that if you have a pre-existing condition you can't be turned down, but I don't like the idea that if you don't have health insurance you'll be fined," said Sliger.

Impressions of the health care rollout while low, have improved slightly.

While only 5 percent of Americans say the launch of the insurance exchanges has gone very or extremely well, the number who think it has gone at least somewhat well has improved from 12 percent in December to 26 percent now. The exchanges offer subsidized private coverage to people without a plan on the job.

Of those who said they or someone in their household tried signing up for coverage, 59 percent said there were problems.

Repealing the health care law is the rallying cry of Republicans running to capture control of the Senate in the fall congressional elections. The Republican-led House has already voted more than 50 times to repeal, defund or scale back "Obamacare," but has been stymied in its crusade by Democrats running the Senate.

Thursday, five Democratic senators and one independent - three facing re-election - introduced a package of changes to the law that seems calibrated to public sentiment. One of their major proposals would spare companies with fewer than 100 employees from a requirement to provide coverage to their workers. The current cutoff is 50.

The poll found that 7 in 10 Americans believe the law will be changed.

Larry Carroll, 64, a church deacon from Cameron, W.Va., says he would like to see major changes.

"I think it's much too big a thing for the country to be taking on," said Cameron, who's strongly opposed to the overhaul.
He added, "The federal bureaucracy simply seems to be too strong. The federal bureaucracy is like an anaconda."

Teresa Stevens, a factory supervisor from Jacksonville, Fla., said her two adult sons shopped for coverage on the health insurance exchanges and found it too expensive.

"There are so many different things they say about (the law) that are not true," she said. "It's not affordable."

A supporter of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, Stevens said the economy has soured for working people under Obama. "Everything is so expensive, not just health care," she said.

In April of 2010, soon after the law passed, 50 percent of Americans said they were opposed to it, while 39 percent were in favor. Ten percent were on the fence.

Now, just 26 percent say they are in favor, a drop of 13 percentage points.

The 26 percent in favor in the AP-GfK poll is not significantly different from the 27 percent registered in January and December.

March 28, 2014 1:23 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

"here in America, we separate the bathrooms by gender and include both genders in any arrangement called marriage"

By this he means "in some places in America".

rrjr

March 28, 2014 1:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the real American places, Robo

March 28, 2014 2:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip...I'll have to avoid Café Asia. Businesses are
going to suffer.

March 28, 2014 2:46 PM  
Anonymous just ask Nate Silver said...

actually, I was meaning to ask about that

is that place any good, Robo?

March 28, 2014 3:23 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

It's OK. I prefer the one in Roslyn, though the men's bathrooms there are always messy. They have great happy hour prices on sushi, and it's good sushi (except the tuna was bland last time I went). I'm a fan of the hot saki.

rrjr

March 28, 2014 4:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How do you know the women's bathrooms aren't always messy?

March 28, 2014 5:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am a staunch Republican, a self-proclaimed Fox News addict, and I didn't vote for the President. And I'm here to tell you that Obamacare works. I'm living proof.

I'm a chemotherapy patient, and was previously paying $428 a month for my health coverage. I was not thrilled when it was cancelled.

Then I submitted an application at HealthCare.gov. I looked at my options. And I signed up for a plan for $62 a month.

It's the best health care I have ever had.

So right now, here's what I want to tell anyone who still needs health insurance, or knows someone who does:

Sign up. Follow the instructions on the website. Apply, and look at your options. You still have time, and take it from me: This is something you want to do.

I wrote a letter to President Obama this past February to tell him about my experience with the Health Insurance Marketplace. I hoped he'd read it, and he did.

I may not be a supporter of the President. But now, I get mad when I see Obamacare dragged through the mud on television.

And even though I regularly tune in to conservative pundits, I'd like to tell them they're getting it wrong. Obamacare works.

So one more time: If you still need health insurance, you have just three days to get it. Do what I did. Go to HealthCare.gov, submit an application, and pick a plan that works for you.

It just might change your life.

Mark D. Bearden, Ph.D.
Monroe, North Carolina

March 28, 2014 6:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

thanks, Robert

sushi's always good when you've got time to kill

never read a restaurant review that mentions the restrooms

March 28, 2014 6:15 PM  
Anonymous Can smell a phony said...

To the phony PhD trying to get the numbers up for Obamacare.
Doctors are retiring. Those with
Obamacare won't be able to get
care at the best cancer centers.
My health care premiums went up $3,000 because of it. It is a
lose-lose plan.
They must have paid you to sell it.

March 28, 2014 7:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

good news!!

KFC is no longer #1 chicken place in America

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2014/03/28/chick-fil-a-stole-kfcs-chicken-crown-with-a-fraction-of-the-sto/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl6%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D458929

side with gays, your school system goes downhill and your country loses clout

oppose homosexuality, you get Crimea and top market share and hit TV show about hunting

March 29, 2014 11:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Too bad the "transgender " is illegal.

March 29, 2014 11:38 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The Results Are In: Voters Prefer Gays To Evangelical Christians

In news that is likely disheartening to the many evangelicals who are also LGBT allies, a new poll has found that American voters view gay people far more favorably than they view evangelical Christians. Of course, though our friends may be disheartened, they likely know exactly why that’s the case:

More than a simple matter of “Should gays and lesbians be allowed to marry?”, the poll looked at shifts in opinions over time, reasons for such shifts, and differing opinions among ages, faiths, geographic areas and more.

The first question addressed acceptance, comparing voters’ favorable or unfavorable feelings towards gays and lesbians and towards evangelical Christians. In a nearly80% Christian-identified country, the results might surprise you.

Fifty-three percent of voters said they felt favorably toward gays and lesbians, compared to 42% who felt favorably toward evangelicals. Eighteen percent said they felt unfavorably toward gays and lesbians, while 28% reported unfavorable feelings toward evangelicals.

March 29, 2014 12:08 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In discussing the World Vision flap this week, evangelical writer Benjamin L. Corey explained that, in a way, evangelicalism died this week. People are no longer allowed to hold differing opinions under the tent, and those who would abandon impoverished children because they despise gays so much are the ones carrying the banner:

We often are not able to see or identify pivotal moments in history until long after they have passed. There are times however, when we’re able to realize just how significant a certain moment is.

Especially when someone– or something– dies.

Yesterday was one of those moments in American Evangelicalism.

When World Vision announced that they were now allowing married, gay Christians to work in their US offices, the internet blew up on all sides

Be clear: this actually wasn’t a debate on same sex marriage. This was a debate on whether or not a Christian organization can hire gay Christians from denominations who have a different theological perspective on the issue.

World Vision and those of us who lean my way said “yes– we want everyone working to help the poor and needy and we want to acknowledge diversity in the body.” The others responded with a “Hell no. We’ll pull the support of the children we sponsor before we ever tolerate gay people working here.”

And it’s those very changes that repulse the average American. I’m not even talking about gay people or those with gay children or what have you, but rather just the American folks who don’t even think they have a dog in this fight. They see gays gaining equal rights and it strikes them as fair, and they see the Religious Right and it strikes them as so much bile.

March 29, 2014 12:09 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Bad anonymous said "To the phony PhD trying to get the numbers up for Obamacare.
My health care premiums went up $3,000 because of it. It is a
lose-lose plan."

Little doubt bad anonymous is lying about his personal situation. The congressional Budget Office has released figures that show the cost of insurance under Obamacare has declined by 15%. And as to the claim that Obamacare is a job killer, 8.5 million new jobs have been created since it was passed 4 years ago.

Republicans were gloating when the exchanges weren't working and only 100,000 people signed up in October. They were insisting this was the end of Obamacare but since then over 6 million people have signed up leaving Republicans like Boehner so apoplectic they're laughably trying to score points over the deadline being extended two weeks. Funny how they had no criticism for Bush when he extended the signup deadline for the Medicare drug benefit.

Republicans are freaking out, they don't know what to do now that their favourite talking point is proven false and its clear Obamacare is hear to stay. Now its not just a matter of Repulicans trying to repeal it, they've got to tell over 6 million Americans they want to take their insurance away and leave them with nothing.

Americans overwhelmingly are against repealing Obamacare and going back to the former status quo and that is all Republicans are offering. They lied loud and long about Obamacare. Politifact fact checked some 13 or so ads the Koch backed Americans For Prosperity ran against Obamacare and only two were rated as half truths while the rest were rated as mostly or completely false.

Republicans can't make a case based on reality so they've had to con Americans into thinking Obamacare is a bad thing, but the truth is when you ask them about the specific features of Obamacare they overwhelmingly support it:


80% support letting young adults stay on their parents plan

77% support free preventative care

74% support the medicaid expansion

70% support ending insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions

And of course Obamacare was originally a Republican idea. The only reason they oppose it now is because its Obama promoting it. Republicans - absolute hypocrites.

March 29, 2014 12:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Reminds me of the summer of 2008 when bad anonymous was guaranteeing us that the referendum to repeal montgomery counties implementation of an anti-transgender discrimination law would collect enough signatures and the law would be repealled for sure.

Hahahahahahaha, what a loser!

Back then the out of touch fool said "Problem is, you guys are at a disadvantage because of the side you're on. Arguing for the gay agenda, you've got an uphill battle on your hands. Me, I just coast on common sense and I look really smart.".

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahha! How's that working out for you Wyatt? You didn't see your inevitable loss comining but it slapped you upside the head like a cold mackerel.

And then there was this one of Bad anonymous's greatest hits:

"Priya, since you brought up the Huckster, I'll let you in on a secret. There's a conspiracy to make him the next President of the United States.

Don't worry, McCain's in on it.

Here's how it will go down:

McCain nominates Huck. They win the election after more of Obama's friends from the violent, militant radical 60s left emerge. The courts rule after November that McCain is ineligible for the office because he was born outside the United States.

Oila! President Huckabee.

Huckabee's first act as President is to negotiate a gay NAFTA with Canada and Mexico making same sex marriage illegal anywhere in North America.

Keep it on the downlow.

No one is to know.".

Who knew bad anonymous could predict the future with such accuracy?

Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha!

March 29, 2014 12:25 PM  
Anonymous obamacare's failure is a biggie said...

Since the start of the year, when it at last became clear that an ill-designed website was merely the least of Obamacare's problems, Democrats have been on a search for a plausible villain on whom this sad state of affairs can be blamed.

E.J. Dionne blames Republican nastiness, but he blames this for everything.

Alec MacGillis at the New Republic blames Republican governors who rejected the expansion of Medicaid: "Obamacare is hurting Democratic candidates because Republicans are hurting Obamacare," runs his article's headline. Well, that explains why the exchanges in Maryland, Oregon and Colorado are all in such chaos: If only they had Democrats in the state houses, who got with the program. Oh wait -- they do have them. So much for that theory.

But in real life, it’s not hard to find some real culprits, in plain sight and right under our nose.

Blame the progressives, who thought a financial collapse was too small a thing on which to waste a good crisis, and thought the time was right to revisit their wish list and dredge up an old cause for which there was no public clamor. The last time, when the Clintons tried it, it did not end well.

Blame President Obama, whose swelled head made him want to do big things too quickly. Blame his hubris, when he decided to ignore and then override a very strong wave of intense opposition and then use a loophole to circumvent the very last roadblock, which the Constitution and Scott Brown's election had managed to put in his way.

Blame the "experts" he named, with sterling credentials and no sense whatsoever, who thought the perverse incentives they built into the bill would be no drag at all on the larger economy; that the 6 million to 10 million people they forced out of their plans in the first phase of the rollout would have no impact at all on public opinion; and that untold numbers of people could be arbitrarily moved from one set of doctors and hospitals into another with the relative ease with which consumers switch brand names and markets.

But patients understand that having one special doctor can mean the difference between cancer caught at stage one or stage three, or treatment begun before and not when a stroke happens; a change in kind and in cost from one’s usual shopping experience. Medical care isn’t a steak one can buy at a number of markets. Obama and his experts had failed to see that.

Blame Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who kept it alive so it could die on its own in full view of the public; blame House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who pushed for the loophole; blame the Democrats who knew this was wrong and said nothing about it; and blame too the pundits, from E.J. Dionne on down to the lowliest bloggers, who kept up the drumbeat once Brown was elected to the Senate that his win should mean nothing at all.

"Pass. The. Damn. Bill." was their mantra, repeated again and again over numerous bylines, with the very same words of advice: No one would care how the bill passed once it was over. No price would be paid for stiffing the public. Obama would emerge from this stronger than ever. All of it certain, and all of it wrong.

Yes, there are people to blame for it all, but not the ones who foresaw and who warned what would happen. And so we can say to these panicking Democrats: Blame. Your. Damn. Selves.

March 29, 2014 12:59 PM  
Anonymous global warming isn't said...

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will shortly publish the second part of its latest report, on the likely impact of climate change. Government representatives are meeting with scientists in Japan to sex up—sorry, rewrite—a summary of the scientists' accounts of storms, droughts and diseases to come. But the actual report is less frightening than its predecessor seven years ago.

The 2007 report was riddled with errors about Himalayan glaciers, the Amazon rain forest, African agriculture, water shortages and other matters, all of which erred in the direction of alarm. This led to a critical appraisal of the report-writing process from a council of national science academies, some of whose recommendations were simply ignored.

Others, however, hit home. According to leaks, this time the full report is much more cautious and vague about worsening cyclones, changes in rainfall, climate-change refugees, and the overall cost of global warming.

It puts the overall cost at less than 2% of GDP for a 2.5 degrees Centigrade (or 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature increase during this century. This is vastly less than the much heralded prediction of Lord Stern, who said climate change would cost 5%-20% of world GDP in his influential 2006 report for the British government.

The forthcoming report apparently admits that climate change has extinguished no species so far and expresses "very little confidence" that it will do so. There is new emphasis that climate change is not the only environmental problem that matters and on adapting to it rather than preventing it. Yet the report still assumes 70% more warming by the last decades of this century than the best science now suggests. This is because of an overreliance on models rather than on data in the first section of the IPCC report—on physical science—that was published in September 2013.

In this space (WSJ) on Dec. 19, 2012, I forecast that the IPCC was going to have to lower its estimates of future warming because of new sensitivity results. (Sensitivity is the amount of warming due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.) "Cooling Down Fears of Climate Change" (Dec. 19), led to a storm of protest, in which I was called "anti-science," a "denier" and worse.

The IPCC's September 2013 report abandoned any attempt to estimate the most likely "sensitivity" of the climate to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The explanation, buried in a technical summary not published until January, is that "estimates derived from observed climate change tend to best fit the observed surface and ocean warming for [sensitivity] values in the lower part of the likely range." Translation: The data suggest we probably face less warming than the models indicate, but we would rather not say so.

March 29, 2014 1:00 PM  
Anonymous global warming isn't said...

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a London think tank, published a careful survey of all the reliable studies of sensitivity on March 5. The authors are British climate scientist Nic Lewis (who has no academic affiliation but a growing reputation since he discovered a glaring statistical distortion that exaggerated climate sensitivity in the previous IPCC report) and the Dutch science writer Marcel Crok. They say the IPCC's September report "buried good news about global warming," and that "the best observational evidence indicates our climate is considerably less sensitive to greenhouse gases than climate scientists had previously thought."

Messrs. Lewis and Crok argue that the average of the best observationally based studies shows the amount of immediate warming to be expected if carbon dioxide levels double after 70 years is "likely" to be between one and two degrees Centigrade, with a best estimate of 1.35C (or 2.4F). That's much lower than the IPCC assumes in its forthcoming report.

In short, the warming we experienced over the past 35 years—about 0.4C (or 0.7F) if you average the measurements made by satellites and those made by ground stations—is likely to continue at about the same rate: a little over a degree a century.

Briefly during the 1990s there did seem to be warming that went as fast as the models wanted. But for the past 15-17 years there has been essentially no net warming (a "hiatus" now conceded by the IPCC), a fact that the models did not predict and now struggle to explain. The favorite post-hoc explanation is that because of natural variability in ocean currents more heat has been slipping into the ocean since 2000—although the evidence for this is far from conclusive.

None of this contradicts basic physics. Doubling carbon dioxide cannot on its own generate more than about 1.1C (2F) of warming, however long it takes. All the putative warming above that level would come from amplifying factors, chiefly related to water vapor and clouds. The net effect of these factors is the subject of contentious debate.

March 29, 2014 1:01 PM  
Anonymous global warming isn't said...

In climate science, the real debate has never been between "deniers" and the rest, but between "lukewarmers," who think man-made climate change is real but fairly harmless, and those who think the future is alarming. Scientists like Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Richard Lindzen of MIT MITD +47.69% have moved steadily toward lukewarm views in recent years.

Even with its too-high, too-fast assumptions, the recently leaked draft of the IPCC impacts report makes clear that when it comes to the effect on human welfare, "for most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers," such as economic growth and technology, for the rest of this century. If temperatures change by about 1C degrees between now and 2090, as Mr. Lewis calculates, then the effects will be even smaller.

Indeed, a small amount of warming spread over a long period will, most experts think, bring net improvements to human welfare. Studies such as by the IPCC author and economist Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University in Britain show that global warming has probably done so already. People can adapt to such change—which essentially means capture the benefits but minimize the harm. Satellites have recorded a roughly 14% increase in greenery on the planet over the past 30 years, in all types of ecosystems, partly as a result of man-made CO2 emissions, which enable plants to grow faster and use less water.

There remains a risk that the latest science is wrong and rapid warming will occur with disastrous consequences. And if renewable energy had proved by now to be cheap, clean and thrifty in its use of land, then we would be right to address that small risk of a large catastrophe by rushing to replace fossil fuels with first-generation wind, solar and bioenergy. But since these forms of energy have proved expensive, environmentally damaging and land-hungry, it appears that in our efforts to combat warming we may have been taking the economic equivalent of chemotherapy for a cold.

Almost every global environmental scare of the past half century proved exaggerated including the population "bomb," pesticides, acid rain, the ozone hole, falling sperm counts, genetically engineered crops and killer bees. In every case, institutional scientists gained a lot of funding from the scare and then quietly converged on the view that the problem was much more moderate than the extreme voices had argued. Global warming is no different.

March 29, 2014 1:02 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The Global Warming Policy Foundation who Wyatt relied on for his right wing distortion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was set up specifically to oppose any efforts to mititgate global warming. The foundation has rejected freedom of information (FoI) requests to disclose its source of funding on at least four different occasions.

As previously shown, they are in the extreme minority of scientists who think global warming is "no biggie".

March 29, 2014 1:10 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Bad anonymous said "To the phony PhD trying to get the numbers up for Obamacare.
My health care premiums went up $3,000 because of it. It is a
lose-lose plan."

Little doubt bad anonymous is lying about his personal situation. The congressional Budget Office has released figures that show the cost of insurance under Obamacare has declined by 15%. And as to the claim that Obamacare is a job killer, 8.5 million new jobs have been created since it was passed 4 years ago.

Republicans were gloating when the exchanges weren't working and only 100,000 people signed up in October. They were insisting this was the end of Obamacare but since then over 6 million people have signed up leaving Republicans like Boehner so apoplectic they're laughably trying to score points over the deadline being extended two weeks. Funny how they had no criticism for Bush when he extended the signup deadline for the Medicare drug benefit.

Republicans are freaking out, they don't know what to do now that their favourite talking point is proven false and its clear Obamacare is hear to stay. Now its not just a matter of Repulicans trying to repeal it, they've got to tell over 6 million Americans they want to take their insurance away and leave them with nothing.

Americans overwhelmingly are against repealing Obamacare and going back to the former status quo and that is all Republicans are offering. They lied loud and long about Obamacare. Politifact fact checked some 13 or so ads the Koch backed Americans For Prosperity ran against Obamacare and only two were rated as half truths while the rest were rated as mostly or completely false.

Republicans can't make a case based on reality so they've had to con Americans into thinking Obamacare is a bad thing, but the truth is when you ask them about the specific features of Obamacare they overwhelmingly support it:


80% support letting young adults stay on their parents plan

77% support free preventative care

74% support the medicaid expansion

70% support ending insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions

And of course Obamacare was originally a Republican idea. The only reason they oppose it now is because its Obama promoting it. Republicans - absolute hypocrites.

March 29, 2014 1:11 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The Global Warming Policy Foundation who Wyatt relied on for his right wing distortion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was set up specifically to oppose any efforts to mititgate global warming. The foundation has rejected freedom of information (FoI) requests to disclose its source of funding on at least four different occasions.

And its a similar case with the Judith Curry whose uncertainty-focused climate outreach communication has a well documented history of containing elementary mistakes and inflammatory assertions unsupported by evidence.

As we can see, they are in the extreme minority of scientists who think global warming is "no biggie".

An analysis of nearly 12,000 scientific research papers done by climate scientists concludes that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are to blame for climate change, with a dissenting view held by less than two percent of scientists.

March 29, 2014 1:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


Forecasts of global temperature rises over the past 15 years have proved remarkably accurate,
new analysis of scientists' modelling of climate change shows.


The paper, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, explores the performance of a climate forecast based on data up to 1996 by comparing it with the actual temperatures observed since. The results show that scientists accurately predicted the warming experienced in the past decade, relative to the decade to 1996, to within a few hundredths of a degree.

New Study Finds Extreme Snowstorms And Deluges Are Becoming More Frequent And More Severe

As our climate warms, wet areas will generally get wetter (and dry areas drier). One of the consequences of global warming is the severity and frequency of rain and snow storms – fueled by the increase moisture in the atmosphere as the air warms.

A new report released by Environment America Research & Policy Center analyzed more than 80 million daily precipitation records across the United States from 1948 through 2011. The analysis reveals that climate change is now affecting the large rain or snowstorms.

The following are highlights from the report:

•Extreme downpours – rainstorms and snow falls … are now happening 30 percent more often on average across the contiguous United States than in 1948.
•New England has experienced the greatest change with intense rainstorms now happening 85 percent more often than in 1948.
•Not only are extreme downpours more frequent, but they are more intense. The total amount of precipitation produced by the largest storm in each year at each station increase by 10 percent over the period of analysis, on average across the contiguous United States.

But the United States is not the only country to experience extreme rain, snow, and flooding. Australia saw the country’s worst floods since 1974. A surge of rain in Brazil caused deadly landslides north of Rio de Janerio. Rainfall during June to September’s monsoons season in Thailand was up to 80% higher than the season average according to the WMO.




March 29, 2014 1:41 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And contrary to bad anonymous's delusional rants about what the IPCC has said about the global warming slowdown over the past 15 years, here's what they really said:

In the latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report are two key areas that deserve special attention: sea level rise and a recent slowdown in global warming.

The new report incorporates new information on the melting of Greenland and Antarctica, data that had prevented the Nobel Prize-winning panel from making confident projections of sea level rise in its previous reports.

Meanwhile, the slowdown in the rate of warming in recent years has attracted the attention of skeptics of manmade climate change, who argue that climate computer models failed to anticipate the slowdown, which they say calls into question longer-term projections of a warming climate.

By significantly raising the projected rates and amounts of sea level rise through 2100, the IPCC is sounding alarms for coastal cities worldwide, many of which are already being forced to adapt to increased flooding. The devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy in New York in 2012 drove home the lethal combination of long-term sea level rise and extreme weather events, and the IPCC’s projections show that urban planners have a major challenge.

For example, a recent study on coastal flooding of the world’s largest coastal cities found that Hong Kong has $60.7 billion sitting at or below the 100-year flood level. That study found that if no actions are taken to boost Hong Kong's flood defenses, coastal flooding could put $140 billion in infrastructure at-risk if sea levels rise by 15.8 inches.

March 29, 2014 1:44 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Sea level rise is one of the most visible effects of climate change, and the report found that sea levels are increasing more rapidly than in previous decades. During the 1901-2010 period, the report said, global averaged sea level rise was 0.07 inches per year, which accelerated to .13 inches per year between 1993 and 2010.

The IPCC’s four scenarios of the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through 2100 all show faster rates of sea level rise compared to that observed during 1971-2010, the report said.

The new report projects that global mean sea level rise for 2081-2100 will likely be in the range of 10.2 to 32 inches, depending on greenhouse gas emissions. However, the report notes, as other studies have found, that local amounts of sea level rise could be much higher in some coastal areas.

The scenario with the highest amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere shows a mean sea level rise range between 21 and 38.2 inches, which would be devastating for many highly populated coastal cities at or near current sea levels.

Rising sea levels can combine with extreme weather events to flood coastal infrastructure, as occurred during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 at the Hoboken, N.J., transit station.

The sea level rise projections in the report’s Summary for Policymakers were higher than those contained in the draft document before it underwent government review. They were also much higher than the projections in the 2007 report, which projected a global mean sea level rise of 7.1 to 23.2 inches by 2100, but it did not include the influence of rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet as well as portions of Antarctica because not enough information was known at the time.

March 29, 2014 1:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Because of the long atmospheric lifetime of CO2, with about 15 to 40 percent of emitted CO2 remaining in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years, as well as the lag in the ocean’s response to warming, Friday’s IPCC report said that sea levels would likely increase for centuries beyond 2100 and global average air temperatures would remain at elevated levels as well. This notion of the “irreversibility” of global warming on human timescales underscores the need to begin making emissions reductions in the near-term, scientists and policy makers said.

The report also addressed the controversial recent slowdown in the rate of global warming, noting that the report states that the rate of warming over the past 15 years is about 0.09°F per decade, which is smaller than the trend since 1951, which is about 0.21°F per decade.

The report said that natural climate variability, such as volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, and “redistribution of heat within the ocean” are the most likely causes of the short-term hiatus in warming. “Trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not, in general, reflect long-term climate trends,” the report said.

At a press conference, authors of the report cautioned against concluding that climate models can’t project global temperature change, since many of them accurately capture the longer-term climate record. The report itself said that climate models are “not expected to reproduce the timing of internal variability” in the climate system.

“There is not a lot of published literature that allows us to delve deeper at the required depth of this emerging scientific question,” he said. Stocker said another 20 years without much warming, along with continued high emissions of greenhouse gases, would be required before serious questions about the accuracy of climate models would be raised.

March 29, 2014 1:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Most of the extra heat being put into the climate system by greenhouse gases is going into the oceans, accounting for more than 90 percent of the energy accumulated between 1971-2010, the report found. In recent years, deep ocean heat content, particularly in the Southern Ocean, has increased rapidly even while global air temperatures have slowed their rate of increase.

Scientists said the ocean heat content would yield further increases in global temperatures in the coming years, as the heat slowly percolates through the ocean layers and enters the atmosphere.

March 29, 2014 1:46 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

While its true that the rate of atmospheric temperature increases have slowed over the last 15 years, the overall warming of the entire climate system has continued rapidly over the past 15 years, even faster than the 15 years before that. If you look at this graph you can see that while the rate of temperature increase in the atmosphere has slowed, the atmospheric heating represents only 2% of the overall warming of the global climate. The rates of temperature increase for the remaining portions of the global climate such as upper and deep ocean temperatures, and land and ice temperatures have increased at a far greater rate. It is a myth that global warming has paused, or halted.

March 29, 2014 1:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Bad anonymous said "Almost every global environmental scare of the past half century proved exaggerated including the population "bomb," pesticides, acid rain, the ozone hole, falling sperm counts, genetically engineered crops and killer bees. In every case, institutional scientists gained a lot of funding from the scare and then quietly converged on the view that the problem was much more moderate than the extreme voices had argued. Global warming is no different.".

Of course Bad anonymous (Wyatt) is just throwing any B.S. he can at the wall hoping some of it will stick when he really has no idea of the scientific validity of any of these things he brings up - its just desperation.

A good example of how out of touch and dishonest he is is his claim that the hole in the Ozone was a hoax as this previous post from good anonymous shows:

guess you missed the Montreal Protocol, which banned ozone depleting chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons.

The Montreal Protocol is "the most successful international environmental agreement to date. In a 2001 report, NASA found the ozone thinning over Antarctica had remained the same thickness for the previous three years, however in 2003 the ozone hole grew to its second largest size.

And now we know why.

New scientific study has found more man-made ozone-depleting chemicals that we need to add to the Montreal Protocol.

Loopholes in CFC ban pose new threat to ozone layer, say scientists

"Four new man-made, ozone-destroying chemicals have been discovered in the upper atmosphere, and appear to be slowing the recovery of the ozone hole, according to a new report.

The ozone hole over Antarctica has been gradually healing ever since an international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol began limiting the production of ozone-depleting chemicals in 1989. These chemicals, known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), were commonly used in refrigerators, air conditioners and aerosols until they were found to react with and break down ozone molecules in the Earth's protective ozone layer. The treaty was created to significantly cut CFC emissions and allow the ozone hole to completely close, potentially by 2050.

In 2010, a total ban on CFCs was put in place, but certain loopholes still exist in the Montreal Protocol that allow trace amounts of the chemicals to be used in the production of certain products, including some types of insecticides and solvents used to clean electronic equipment.

Now, researchers based at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom have calculated that these loopholes — previously thought to be relatively insignificant — have actually allowed more than 74,000 metric tons (about 82,000 tons) of three previously unknown CFCs, and one related compound known as an HCFC, to be released into the atmosphere. While this quantity is far smaller than peak CFC emissions in the 1980s, it is still a significant quantity that could slow the recovery of the ozone hole, the team reports today (March 9) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"In comparison to the 1980s, it is minor — it is not a threat to the ozone layer just yet," said study co-author Johannes Laube.

But emissions of two of the compounds appear to have accelerated in recent years, which could result in more serious degradation of the ozone layer within a decade, Laube told Live Science.

To quantify the emissions of the new compounds, the researchers compared modern air samples with nearly century-old air samples trapped in old, compacted snow (known as firn snow) from Greenland. The team did not detect any of the four new compounds in snow from before the 1960s, which suggests that the compounds were man-made...."

March 29, 2014 2:14 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...



Bad anonymous is similarly uninformed, deluded, or dishonest about the other issues he brought up. The scientific consensus on overpopulation is near universal, it is an obvious fact that a finite planet cannot support an infinitely growing human population. Humans and their feed animals make up the vast majority of the animal biomass on the planet - nature is seriously out of balance.

The damage to the environment from acid rain is well documented andthe development of genetically modified foods is a potentially serious problem.
Research has demonstrated that these genetically modified crops are squeezing out varied and ancient strains of grains and threatening the bio-diversity of the planet and the overuse of pesticides has resulted in dramatic drops in bee populations that are required to pollinate all manner of plants.

In India the introduction of genetically modifed cotton has been a disaster. Monsanto bought out all the local cotton seed growers and now is the only supplier and seed prices have quadrupled putting already poor framers in dire straights. Compounding this is that the GMO cotton requires pesticides and herbicides that the native varieties didn't which desperate farmers must also buy from Monsanto at inflated prices. The genetically modified cotton has proven susceptible to disease the natural varieties were resistant to and the harvest volume has dropped dramatically. There is now a huge spike in suicides amongst Indian farmers as their income has plummetted or even turned negative due to genetically modified cotton.

March 29, 2014 2:14 PM  
Anonymous can smell a phony said...

Not lying. My insurance premiums
went up $3,000 since Obamacare.
If I signed up for Obamacare, it would be even higher. Employment figures have risen? Only the government can afford to hire anyone anymore.
They can't afford it, but they do it anyway. Afterall, it's other people's money. What difference does it make at this point?

March 29, 2014 2:56 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The congressional budget office has reported that insurance premiums have gone down 15% since Obamacare.

Can you find the odd person for who premiums have gone up? Of course, but for the vast majority of people they've gone down.

You're simply trying to deceive people by pretending anecdotes of higher premiums are typical of everyone's policy. That's a lie.

And given how often you've lied on this blog there's no reason to believe your claim that your premiums have gone up.

March 29, 2014 3:15 PM  
Anonymous can smell a phony said...

I may be odd, but not alone.
Of course insurance premiums have to rise. If not this year, next. How else will the insurance companies pay for all the required procedures for everyone? Next thing you know, they'll even require transgender re-re-reassignment surgery for those who STILL can't make up their mind.

March 29, 2014 3:26 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I never said you were alone, I said you were untypical.

And in any event I don't your claim that your premiums have gone up, you're a chronic liar.

The fact is that overall premiums have gone down 15%, the Congressional Budget Office has verified this.

Premiums have gone done and because junk plans have been eliminated coverage has gone up.

The vast majority of people who undergo sex reassingment surgery are happy with it. Even if Obamacare did cover it given that only perhaps 1 person in 10,000 gets it the increase in cost overall would be virtually non-existant.

Obamcare lowers health care costs by making preventive health care affordable for most of the 33 million Americans who have no health insurance. They don't have to wait until their illness becomes so critical that they wind up using the hospital emergency room as their primary care provider. That lowers national health care costs for everyone.

Every year, Medicare agrees on certain payment rates for covered services to health care providers. These annual updates are reduced by 21%, saving $196 billion. Hospital groups agreed to give up their portion, $155 billion, because they expect to make more than that –- at least $170 billion -- by having to treat fewer uninsured patients.

Another $136 billion is saved by reducing Medicare Advantage overpayments. This private health plan covers one in five seniors. Medicare Advantage costs 13% more than traditional Medicare. Savings started in 2011.


Drug companies will be charged higher fees to help cover the "donut hole" in Medicare Prescription Drug Part D benefits. Medicare only covers the first $2,840 in prescription drug costs. Before the Affordable Care Act, the patient paid 100%, up to $4,550, when Medicare coverage kicked in again. The Affordable Care Act helped cover the costs of the dounut hole: $250 per patient in 2010, 50% in 2011, and 100% in 2020.

The extra drug company fees will add $84.8 billion in revenue over the next ten years. In addition, they will subsidize the cost of prescription drugs, saving Medicaid $38 billion.

March 29, 2014 3:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Not lying. My insurance premiums
went up $3,000 since Obamacare."


The total cost of insurance includes the premiums and the limit of your out of pocket expenses.

If you're not lying this time, you are at least hiding part of your costs, your out of pocket limit.

So tell the whole truth this time.

The only way to compare last year's cost to this year's cost is to tell us what your 2013 out of pocket expenses were limited to by that cheaper insurance you had last year and then tell us what your new $3000 higher premium policy's out of pocket limits will be for 2014.

Health insurance costs also vary depending on how many things they cover.

So if you're going to be fully truthful, you need to tell us if your cheaper 2013 health insurance was ACA-compliant or not. If it was ACA-compliant, it had to cover all 10 health care benefits covered in the Health Insurance Marketplace, which are:

"Outpatient care—the kind you get without being admitted to a hospital
Trips to the emergency room
Treatment in the hospital for inpatient care
Care before and after your baby is born
Mental health and substance use disorder services: This includes behavioral health treatment, counseling, and psychotherapy
Your prescription drugs
Services and devices to help you recover if you are injured, or have a disability or chronic condition. This includes physical and occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, psychiatric rehabilitation, and more.
Your lab tests
Preventive services including counseling, screenings, and vaccines to keep you healthy and care for managing a chronic disease.
Pediatric services: This includes dental care and vision care for kids"


And did your cheaper 2013 health insurance provide these preventative services free of charge like all ACA-compliant plans must?

March 29, 2014 3:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If I signed up for Obamacare, it would be even higher.

I believe Anon is lying about this. Anon, I dare you to check the exchange and see what is available to you. Your cost went up because your plan didn't meet the minimum standard, you were buying crap. Shop around, there is something better for you.

March 29, 2014 3:59 PM  
Anonymous svelte_brunette said...

If we want to cut health costs, the best place to start is by outlawing health insurance companies.

They have been sucking higher and higher premiums out of people and paying less of their bills for decades. They are an unnecessary parasite in our health care system.

Our premiums should be going into our own interest bearing accounts (that can only be used for health care) and we should be able to pay the doctors of our choice. Doctors would then be competing more for our dollars and without the insurance industry to support, prices would come down.

Insurance funds from one family member could be used to help other family members. Children would have money going into their health care accounts when they are born (or even earlier).

But since we live in a plutocracy, this will never happen.

Have a nice day,

Cynthia

March 29, 2014 11:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey released on Wednesday, 46 percent said they have an unfavorable view of the healthcare law, against 38 percent who have a favorable view.

That’s an 8-point improvement over Kaiser's January poll, when 50 percent had a negative view and 34 percent had a positive view of the healthcare law. It’s a 4-point improvement over February, when the margin was 47 percent to 35 percent.

The first-ever open enrollment period closes at the end of the month, and after an extremely rocky start, the Obama administration hopes to have momentum coming out of March.

The administration said 5.2 million people had selected a plan through the middle of March and has long expected a flood of enrollees to close out the period..."


Md. health exchange centers inundated as deadline looms

"With only a few days left for Marylanders to begin the process of signing up for health insurance or risk a government fine, thousands of residents are seeking help with the state’s online marketplace — and often waiting hours, or even days, to get it.

A line of people in search of coverage began to form at 6 a.m. Wednesday outside the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services’ Silver Spring center, one of the region’s busiest enrollment operations.

When the doors opened at 8 a.m., more than 40 people rushed inside, following paper signs printed with the word “Obamacare” to the second floor and fighting to get their names on the sign-in sheet.

“I’m doing this because I have to, not because I’m getting sick,” said Jorge Olivares, 24, who was No. 15 in line after getting turned away Tuesday..."


Approval is increasing, lots of folks including young people have waited until the last minute to sign up, we have already crossed the CBO's 6 million sign up threshold and there are two more days for folks to start signing up to avoid paying the fine.

This is just what was predicted and follows a similar slow start sign up period like Romneycare in Massachusetts.

March 30, 2014 10:10 AM  
Anonymous can smell a phony said...

ok, I realize I left out one imnportant piece of info. on my premium increase. Yes, it went up 3,000, but, that was for two people. So, mine alone, would be 1,500 increase. Still, household increase was 3,000 and that is terrible. Same plan as last year, still 1,500 deductible for each person, but, this year, no coverage for preventive care such as physicals, colonoscopies, mammograms. It was still better to take this same plan since the Obamacare premium was higher and didn't offset the loss of preventive care. I lose. Unemployed and illegal aliens all win. There are no guarantees that the people signing up for Obamacare won't pay higher next year anyway. The trick was to get everyone sucked in to sign up. Or, pay a fine. Barrack Hitler Obama. Yet, people would vote for him again if they could.

March 30, 2014 12:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yep, was behind an Hispanic lady at CVS picking up her Medicaid prescriptions this weekend.

and my deductibles all went up close to 50% and premiums up 25% ...

nice to know we are paying for everyone else.

I think preventive care is still covered... but you know, maybe it isn't.

and they would vote for him again. but maybe not after he starts WWIII.

March 30, 2014 5:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Same plan as last year, still 1,500 deductible for each person, but, this year, no coverage for preventive care such as physicals, colonoscopies, mammograms."

Then your 2014 insurance policy is not ACA-compliant.

FYI here are the Preventive health services for women that must be covered by ACA-compliant health plans.

You'll notice #3 covers free in-network mammography every 1 or 2 years for women over the age of 40.

"Comprehensive coverage for women’s preventive care

All Marketplace health plans and many other plans must cover the following list of preventive services for women without charging you a copayment or coinsurance. This is true even if you haven’t met your yearly deductible.

This applies only when these services are delivered by an in-network provider.

1. Anemia screening on a routine basis for pregnant women
2. Breast Cancer Genetic Test Counseling (BRCA) for women at higher risk for breast cancer
3. Breast Cancer Mammography screenings every 1 to 2 years for women over 40
4. Breast Cancer Chemoprevention counseling for women at higher risk
5. Breastfeeding comprehensive support and counseling from trained providers, and access to breastfeeding supplies, for pregnant and nursing women
6. Cervical Cancer screening for sexually active women
7. Chlamydia Infection screening for younger women and other women at higher risk
8. Contraception: Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling, as prescribed by a health care provider for women with reproductive capacity (not including abortifacient drugs). This does not apply to health plans sponsored by certain exempt “religious employers.”
9. Domestic and interpersonal violence screening and counseling for all women
10. Folic Acid supplements for women who may become pregnant
11. Gestational diabetes screening for women 24 to 28 weeks pregnant and those at high risk of developing gestational diabetes
12. Gonorrhea screening for all women at higher risk
13. Hepatitis B screening for pregnant women at their first prenatal visit
14. HIV screening and counseling for sexually active women
15. Human Papillomavirus (HPV) DNA Test every 3 years for women with normal cytology results who are 30 or older
16. Osteoporosis screening for women over age 60 depending on risk factors
17. Rh Incompatibility screening for all pregnant women and follow-up testing for women at higher risk
18. Sexually Transmitted Infections counseling for sexually active women
19. Syphilis screening for all pregnant women or other women at increased risk
20. Tobacco Use screening and interventions for all women, and expanded counseling for pregnant tobacco users
21. Urinary tract or other infection screening for pregnant women
22. Well-woman visits to get recommended services for women under 65"


If you are a woman and your plan is not paying for your mammogram this year, your plan is not ACA-compliant

March 30, 2014 6:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It figures you are too lazy to click on a link I provided earlier to the preventative services free of charge under the ACA, which are all laid out for your laziness, below.

These free preventative benefits are for all insured, not just women like those I provided above.

You might note #6 below is another free benefit required of all ACA-compliant policies which you claimed your new policy no longer covers. That further proves your new plan is NOT ACA-compliant.

"Free preventive services

All Marketplace plans and many other plans must cover the following list of preventive services without charging you a copayment or coinsurance. This is true even if you haven’t met your yearly deductible. This applies only when these services are delivered by a network provider.

1. Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm one-time screening for men of specified ages who have ever smoked
2. Alcohol Misuse screening and counseling
3. Aspirin use to prevent cardiovascular disease for men and women of certain ages
4. Blood Pressure screening for all adults
5. Cholesterol screening for adults of certain ages or at higher risk
6. Colorectal Cancer screening for adults over 50
7. Depression screening for adults
8. Diabetes (Type 2) screening for adults with high blood pressure
9. Diet counseling for adults at higher risk for chronic disease
10. HIV screening for everyone ages 15 to 65, and other ages at increased risk
11. Immunization vaccines for adults--doses, recommended ages, and recommended populations vary:

Hepatitis A
Hepatitis B
Herpes Zoster
Human Papillomavirus
Influenza (Flu Shot)
Measles, Mumps, Rubella
Meningococcal
Pneumococcal
Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis
Varicella

12. Obesity screening and counseling for all adults
13. Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) prevention counseling for adults at higher risk
14. Syphilis screening for all adults at higher risk
15. Tobacco Use screening for all adults and cessation interventions for tobacco users"


So to repeat, if it does not provide free "physicals, colonoscopies, mammograms" as you claim, then your brand new insurance $3000 in higher premium plan is not ACA-compliant.

I didn't ask for your deductible. I asked for your out of pocket limit.

Tell me you are not so ignorant as to not realize they are two entirely different things.

DEDUCTIBLE "The amount you owe for health care services your health insurance or plan covers before your health insurance or plan begins to pay. For example, if your deductible is $1,000, your plan won’t pay anything until you’ve met your $1,000 deductible for covered health care services subject to the deductible. The deductible may not apply to all services."

OUT-OF-POCKET LIMIT "The most you pay during a policy period (usually one year) before your health insurance or plan starts to pay 100% for covered essential health benefits. This limit must include deductibles, coinsurance, copayments, or similar charges and any other expenditure required of an individual which is a qualified medical expense for the essential health benefits. This limit does not have to count premiums, balance billing amounts for non-network providers and other out-of-network cost-sharing, or spending for non-essential health benefits."

March 30, 2014 6:12 PM  
Anonymous scared silly said...

from S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere:

The just-published NIPCC reports may lead to a paradigm shift about what or who causes current climate changes. All the evidence suggests that Nature rules the climate – not Man.

Watch for it: We may be on the threshold of a tipping point in climate history. No, I’m not talking about a tipping point in the sense that the Earth will be covered with ice or become hellishly hot. I’m talking about a tipping point in our views of what controls the climate -- whether it’s mainly humans or whether it’s mainly natural. It makes an enormous difference in climate policy: Do we try to mitigate, at huge cost, or do we merely adapt to natural changes -- as our ancestors did for many millennia?

Such tipping points occur quite frequently in science. I have personally witnessed two paradigm shifts where world scientific opinion changed rapidly -- almost overnight. One was in Cosmology, where the “Steady State” theory of the Universe was replaced by the “Big Bang.” This shift was confirmed by the discovery of the “microwave background radiation,” which has already garnered Nobel prizes, and will likely get more.

The other major shift occurred in Continental Drift. After being denounced by the Science Establishment, the hypothesis of Alfred Wegener, initially based on approximate relations between South America and Africa, was dramatically confirmed by the discovery of “sea-floor spreading.”

These shifts were possible because there were no commercial or financial interests -- and they did not involve the public and politicians. But climate is a different animal: The financial stakes are huge -- in the trillions of dollars, and affect energy policy, and indeed the economic wellbeing of every inhabitant of the developed and developing world. For example, the conversion into ethanol fuel of a substantial portion of the US corn crop raised the price of tortillas in Mexico and caused food riots.

Nevertheless, I believe the time is right for a paradigm shift on climate. For one, there has been no warming now for some 15 years -- in spite of rising levels of greenhouse (GH) gases. Climate models have not come up with any accepted explanation. This disparity, of course, throws great doubt about any future warming derived from these same models, and indeed also about policies that are being advocated -- principally, the mitigation and control of Carbon Dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

March 31, 2014 8:22 AM  
Anonymous scared silly said...

Next year, in Paris, the UN will try to reconstitute the basic features of the (1997-2012) Kyoto Protocol -- an international treaty of participating nations to limit their emissions of CO2. They may succeed -- unless the current paradigm changes.

We can already see the pressure building up for such a treaty. The big guns of international science are actively promoting climate scares. The Royal Society and US National Academy of Sciences have published a joint major report, containing no new science but advocating a “need for action.” The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), the largest scientific organization in the United States, is promoting the same policy, but without a shred of science in their slick pamphlet. Even the once-respected Scientific American magazine has gotten into the act and openly advocates such policies.

All of these Establishment groups, it seems, have a keen eye open for government funding -- not only for research but also the actions that go with such policies. They all accept the climate science as propagated by the three volumes of the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Volume #1, dealing with physical science, was published in Sept 2013; volumes 2 and 3, dealing with impacts and mitigation, will be published in March and April of 2014.

But now, for the first time, we have NIPCC (Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change) as a counter to the IPCC, as an independent voice, a second opinion, if you will -- something that was advocated by the IAC (InterAcademy Council on Science). We now have a credible number of studies, which the IPCC chose to ignore in reaching their conclusion about anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The NIPCC reports were also published in September 2013 (Physical Science), and in March and April of 2014 (Biological Impacts and Societal Impacts).

The NIPCC, in particular its Summary for Policy-Makers (SPM) of Vol 1, looks critically at the evidence that the IPCC uses to back up their claim of AGW. NIPCC notes that the evidence keeps changing over time. The first IPCC report (1990) used an improbable statistical method to suggest that the warming of the early part of the 20th century was due to human-produced GH gases; no one believes this anymore.

The second assessment report of 1996, which led to the infamous 1997 Kyoto Protocol, manufactured the so-called “HotSpot,” a region of increased warming trend, with a maximum in the equatorial troposphere. That evidence has also disappeared: a detailed analysis (published in Nature 1996) showed that the hHotspot doesn’t even exist. In addition, the assumption that it constitutes a “fingerprint” for AGW is in error.

As a result of these two failed attempts to establish some kind of evidence for AGW, the third IPCC report (2001) latched on to the so-called “Hockeystick” graph, which claimed that only the 20th century showed unusual warming during the past 1000 years. However, further scrutiny demonstrated that the Hockeystick was also manufactured -- based on faulty data, erroneous statistical methods, and an inappropriate calibration method. Even purely random data fed into the algorithm would produce a hockeystick.

March 31, 2014 8:25 AM  
Anonymous scared silly said...

In its most recent AR5 of 2013, the IPCC has dropped all previous pieces of evidence and instead concentrates on trying to prove that the reported surface warming between 1978 and 2000 agrees with a warming predicted by climate models. This so-called proof turns out to be a weak reed indeed. The reported warming applies only to surface (land-based) weather stations and is not seen in any other data set; the weather satellite data that measure atmospheric temperature show no significant trend -- neither do proxy data (from analysis of tree rings, ocean/lake sediments, stalagmites, etc)

It can therefore be argued that there has been no appreciable human-caused warming in the 20th century at all -- and that the warming effects of rising GH-gas content of the atmosphere have been quite insignificant. See also http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/11/ipcc_s_bogus_evidence_for_global_warming.html

But what about future global temperatures? Opinions differ sharply -- all the way from another “Little Ice Age” (a calamity, in my opinion) to a resumption of warming (aided by the “missing heat” that some alarmists are sure is hiding somewhere). Personally, I don’t do forecasts since I know too little about the Sun’s interior; I simply try to understand and explain the past climate. But if pressed, I would go with historic cycles, like the observed 1000-1500-yr cycle; it suggests a modest warming over the next few centuries, perhaps in ‘fits and starts’ -- unlike computer models that yield a steady increase in temperature from a steady increase of GH-gas levels.

Will nations accept any treaties emanating from the 2015 Paris Conference? So far, only Western Europe seems to be keen on ratifying -- and even there, doubts are developing. Eastern Europe is definitely against any new Protocol, as are Japan, Australia, and Canada. And what about the Chinese, the world’s largest emitters of CO2? They gain a competitive advantage if their commercial competitors accept the Treaty’s restrictions, which raise their cost of energy.

The United States may be in a transition mode -- and that’s where a paradigm shift could really make a global difference. According to the latest Gallup poll, the US public ranks Global Warming almost at the bottom of twenty issues, mostly concerned with economics. The White House, however, seems to be gung-ho for climate alarmism. President Obama is planning new climate initiatives, based on advice from his Science Adviser, John Holdren, an erstwhile disciple of “Population Bomb” Paul Ehrlich. John Podesta has come aboard as counselor and special assistant to the President to push climate initiatives. And of course, the rest of the Administration is in tune with the White House.

Secretary of State John Kerry considers AGW the greatest challenge to US security -- in spite of having his plate full of foreign-policy problems: the Iran nuclear negotiations, the Syrian civil war, a developing Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Arab-Israel ‘peace’ negotiations, and the Russian annexation of Crimea. This, of course, is the same John Kerry, who as a US Senator in 1997 voted for the Byrd-Hagel Resolution against the likes of a Kyoto Protocol.

In mid-2014, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will issue its opinion on the EPA’s mis-guided and unscientific efforts to limit or even abolish the use of coal for electric generation. If SCOTUS can become aware of the NIPCC conclusions, they will surely decide against EPA and therefore the WH. Such an event may become the trigger for a cataclysmic paradigm shift in US policy on energy and climate. The November 2014 elections could tip the balance and finally kill the myth of Global Warming catastrophes in the US and throughout the world.




March 31, 2014 8:26 AM  
Anonymous scared silly said...

NIPCC Conclusions in Brief

Backed by thousands of peer-reviewed studies, are in striking contrast to the IPCC’s alarmist predictions:

**Climate data tell us that the human impact on Earth’s climate is very small and that any warming due to GH gases will be so small as to be indiscernible from natural variability.
**The net impacts of modestly rising temperatures and higher carbon-dioxide levels on plants, animals, wildlife, and human welfare have been positive so far and are likely to continue to be positive.
**The costs of trying to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions vastly exceed the benefits. Annual cost per US household would run to some $3,900; would destroy millions of jobs.
**In light of the new science and economics of climate change, thousands of laws passed at the height of the global warming scare need to be re-evaluated, modified, or repealed.



.

March 31, 2014 8:26 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sheesh Anon. A simple URL would suffice:

Here you go http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/the_coming_paradigm_shift_on_climate_.html.

It was written by a Siegfried Paul Singer, who questions "the link between UV-B and melanoma rates, and that between CFCs and stratospheric ozone loss [in spite of the fact the Montreal Protocol banned CFCs and the ozone hole stopped growing until new CFC's were made], his public denial of the health risks of passive smoking, and as an outspoken critic of the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming."

Go light up all the smokes you want as you sunbathe without sunblock to celebrate Singer's misunderstanding of science.


March 31, 2014 9:26 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think few go to links

S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere

he seems to have a lot of credentials

without more details, it's hard to assess what you're talking about, but, clearly, the effects of global warming have been hyped

maybe the link between UV-B and melanoma rates, between CFCs and stratospheric ozone loss and between health risks and passive smoking have too

when science stops questioning, it has lost it's dynamic value

March 31, 2014 10:09 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So go ahead. Put your faith in the hands of one old man who got his PhD in Physics in 1948.

Light up, it won't hurt you, even though though Singer's father, a heavy smoker, died of emphysema when Singer was young.

Go head, sunbathe. Don't worry about melanoma because of your beliefs.

Put your faith in Singer's Moonie- and energy companies-funded research.

"...Fred Singer [was] executive director of the think tank, the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). This project was originally set up in 1990 with the help of the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy (funded by the Rev Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church) which provided it with free office space. (SEPP is no longer affiliated with Moon and receives its funding from various foundations.)

SEPP argues that global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain are not real but rather are scare tactics used by environmentalists. Singer, speaks and writes prolifically on these subjects and is in demand by anti-environment groups. He is on the advisory board of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). Two of the leading Australian conservative think tanks have sponsored him to tour Australia, putting his views on global warming. Most recently he toured Austria in November 1997, prior to the Kyoto conference, and presented a speech to the Austrian parliament. He has worked for companies such as Exxon, Shell, and Arco. According to the Environmental Research Foundation:

'For years, Singer was a professor at the University of Virginia where he was funded by energy companies to pump out glossy pamphlets pooh-poohing climate change. Singer hasn't published original research on climate change in 20 years and is now an 'independent' consultant, who spends his time writing letters to the editor, and testifying before Congress, claiming that ozone-depletion and global warming aren't real problems. (Montague 1995)" '

March 31, 2014 12:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"WASHINGTON — President Obama's healthcare law, despite a rocky rollout and determined opposition from critics, already has spurred the largest expansion in health coverage in America in half a century, national surveys and enrollment data show.

As the law's initial enrollment period closes, at least 9.5 million previously uninsured people have gained coverage. Some have done so through marketplaces created by the law, some through other private insurance and others through Medicaid, which has expanded under the law in about half the states.

The tally draws from a review of state and federal enrollment reports, surveys and interviews with insurance executives and government officials nationwide.

The Affordable Care Act still faces major challenges, particularly the risk of premium hikes next year that could drive away newly insured customers. But the increased coverage so far amounts to substantial progress toward one of the law's principal goals and is the most significant expansion since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.

The millions of newly insured also create a politically important constituency that may complicate any future Republican repeal efforts.

Precise figures on national health coverage will not be available for months. But available data indicate:

• At least 6 million people have signed up for health coverage on the new marketplaces, about one-third of whom were previously uninsured.
• A February survey by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found 27% of new enrollees were previously uninsured, but newer survey data from the nonprofit Rand Corp. and reports from marketplace officials in several states suggest that share increased in March.
• At least 4.5 million previously uninsured adults have signed up for state Medicaid programs, according to Rand's unpublished survey data, which were shared with The Times. That tracks with estimates from Avalere Health, a consulting firm that is closely following the law's implementation.
• An additional 3 million young adults have gained coverage in recent years through a provision of the law that enables dependent children to remain on their parents' health plans until they turn 26, according to national health insurance surveys from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• About 9 million people have bought health plans directly from insurers, instead of using the marketplaces, Rand found. The vast majority of these people were previously insured.
• Fewer than a million people who had health plans in 2013 are now uninsured because their plans were canceled for not meeting new standards set by the law, the Rand survey indicates.

Republican critics of the law have suggested that the cancellations last fall have led to a net reduction in coverage.

That is not supported by survey data or insurance companies, many of which report they have retained the vast majority of their 2013 customers by renewing old policies, which is permitted in about half the states, or by moving customers to new plans.

"We are talking about a very small fraction of the country" who lost coverage, said Katherine Carman, a Rand economist who is overseeing the survey.

Rand has been polling 3,300 Americans monthly about their insurance choices since last fall. Researchers found that the share of adults ages 18 to 64 without health insurance has declined from 20.9% last fall to 16.6% as of March 22.

The decrease parallels a similar drop recorded by Gallup, which found in its national polling that the uninsured rate among adults had declined from 18% in the final quarter of last year to 15.9% through the first two months of 2014..."


http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obamacare-uninsured-national-20140331,0,5472960.story#ixzz2xZBRVF4j

March 31, 2014 2:50 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The International Panel on Climate Change is a nobel prize winning group of scientists who report on the over 12,000 peer reviewed papers on climate change. They represent the oveerwhelming concensus of scientists on the issue.
Now that bad anonymous has posted his spin on the IPCC's latest report on climate change from groups formed to oppose policies designed to mittigage the problems caused by global warming let's see what the report and scientists really say (its not good):

If the world doesn't cut pollution of heat-trapping gases, the already noticeable harms of global warming could spiral "out of control," the head of a United Nations scientific panel warned Monday. And he's not alone. The Obama White House says it is taking this new report as a call for action, with Secretary of State John Kerry saying "the costs of inaction are catastrophic."

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that issued the 32-volume, 2,610-page report here early Monday, told The Associated Press: "it is a call for action." Without reductions in emissions, he said, impacts from warming "could get out of control."

One of the study's authors, Maarten van Aalst, a top official at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said, "If we don't reduce greenhouse gases soon, risks will get out of hand. And the risks have already risen."

Twenty-first century disasters such as killer heat waves in Europe, wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia and deadly flooding in Mozambique, Thailand and Pakistan highlight how vulnerable humanity is to extreme weather, according to the report from the Nobel Prize-winning group of scientists. The dangers are going to worsen as the climate changes even more, the report's authors said.

"We're now in an era where climate change isn't some kind of future hypothetical," said the overall lead author of the report, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science in California. "We live in an area where impacts from climate change are already widespread and consequential."

March 31, 2014 3:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Nobody is immune, Pachauri and other scientists said. "We're all sitting ducks," Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer, one of the main authors of the report, said in an interview.
After several days of late-night wrangling, more than 100 governments unanimously approved the scientist-written 49-page summary — which is aimed at world political leaders. The summary mentions the word "risk" an average of about 5 1/2 times per page.

"Changes are occurring rapidly and they are sort of building up that risk," Field said. These risks are both big and small, according to the report. They are now and in the future. They hit farmers and big cities. Some places will have too much water, some not enough, including drinking water. Other risks mentioned in the report involve the price and availability of food, and to a lesser and more qualified extent some diseases, financial costs and even world peace.

"Things are worse than we had predicted" in 2007, when the group of scientists last issued this type of report, said report co-author Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University in Bangladesh. "We are going to see more and more impacts, faster and sooner than we had anticipated."

The problems have gotten so bad that the panel had to add a new and dangerous level of risks. In 2007, the biggest risk level in one key summary graphic was "high" and colored blazing red. The latest report adds a new level, "very high," and colors it deep purple.

March 31, 2014 3:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

You might as well call it a "horrible" risk level, said van Aalst: "The horrible is something quite likely, and we won't be able to do anything about it. The report predicts that the highest level of risk would first hit plants and animals, both on land and the acidifying oceans.

Climate change will worsen problems that society already has, such as poverty, sickness, violence and refugees, according to the report. And on the other end, it will act as a brake slowing down the benefits of a modernizing society, such as regular economic growth and more efficient crop production, it says.

"In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans," the report says. And if society doesn't change, the future looks even worse, it says: "Increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts."

While the problems from global warming will hit everyone in some way, the magnitude of the harm won't be equal, coming down harder on people who can least afford it, the report says. It will increase the gaps between the rich and poor, healthy and sick, young and old, and men and women, van Aalst said.

But the report's authors say this is not a modern day version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Much of what they warn of are more nuanced troubles that grow by degrees and worsen other societal ills. The report also concedes that there are uncertainties in understanding and predicting future climate risks.

March 31, 2014 3:06 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The report, the fifth on warming's impacts, includes risks to the ecosystems of the Earth, including a thawing Arctic, but it is far more oriented to what it means to people than past versions. The report also notes that one major area of risk is that with increased warming, incredibly dramatic but ultra-rare single major climate events, sometimes called tipping points, become more possible with huge consequences for the globe. These are events like the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would take more than 1,000 years.

"I can't think of a better word for what it means to society than the word 'risk,'" said Virginia Burkett of the U.S. Geological Survey, one of the study's main authors. She calls global warming "maybe one of the greatest known risks we face."

Global warming is triggered by heat-trapping gases, such as carbon dioxide, that stay in the atmosphere for a century. Much of the gases still in the air and trapping heat came from the United States and other industrial nations. China is now by far the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter, followed by the United States and India.

Unlike in past reports, where the scientists tried to limit examples of extremes to disasters that computer simulations can attribute partly to man-made warming, this version broadens what it looks at because it includes the larger issues of risk and vulnerability, van Aalst said.

Freaky storms like 2013's Typhoon Haiyan, 2012's Superstorm Sandy and 2008's ultra-deadly Cyclone Nargis may not have been caused by warming, but their fatal storm surges were augmented by climate change's ever rising seas, he said.

March 31, 2014 3:06 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And in the cases of the big storms like Haiyan, Sandy and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the poor were the most vulnerable, Oppenheimer and van Aalst said. The report talks about climate change helping create new pockets of poverty and "hotspots of hunger" even in richer countries, increasing inequality between rich and poor.

Report co-author Maggie Opondo of the University of Nairobi said that especially in places like Africa, climate change and extreme events mean "people are going to become more vulnerable to sinking deeper into poverty." And other study authors talked about the fairness issue with climate change. "Rich people benefit from using all these fossil fuels," University of Sussex economist Richard Tol said. "Poorer people lose out."

Huq said he had hope because richer nations and people are being hit more, and "when it hits the rich, then it's a problem" and people start acting on it. Part of the report talks about what can be done: reducing carbon pollution and adapting to and preparing for changing climates with smarter development.

The report echoes an earlier U.N. climate science panel that said if greenhouse gases continue to rise, the world is looking at another about 6 or 7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.5 or 4 degrees Celsius) of warming by 2100 instead of the international goal of not allowing temperatures to rise more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius). The difference between those two outcomes, Princeton's Oppenheimer said, "is the difference between driving on an icy road at 30 mph versus 90 mph. It's risky at 30, but deadly at 90."

Tol, who is in the minority of experts here, had his name removed from the summary because he found it "too alarmist," harping too much on risk. But the panel vice chairman, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, said that's not quite right: "We are pointing for reasons for alarm ... It's because the facts and the science and the data show that there are reasons to be alarmed. It's not because we're alarmist."

March 31, 2014 3:07 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The report is based on more than 12,000 peer reviewed scientific studies. Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, a co-sponsor of the climate panel, said this report was "the most solid evidence you can get in any scientific discipline."

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who wasn't part of this report, said he found the report "very conservative" because it is based on only peer reviewed studies and has to be approved unanimously.

There is still time to adapt to some of the coming changes and reduce heat-trapping emissions, so it's not all bad, said study co-author Patricia Romero-Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

"We have a closing window of opportunity," she said. "We do have choices. We need to act now."

March 31, 2014 3:07 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Who are the climate change deniers?

Despite the international scientific community's consensus on climate change, a small number of critics continue to deny that climate change exists or that humans are causing it. These individuals are generally not climate scientists and do not debate the science with the climate scientists directly—for example, by publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, or participating in international conferences on climate science. Instead, they focus their attention on the media, the general public and policy-makers with the goal of delaying action on climate change.

Not surprisingly, the deniers have received significant funding from coal and oil companies, including ExxonMobil. They also have well-documented connections with public relations firms that have set up industry-funded lobby groups to, in the words of one leaked memo, "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)."

Over the years, the deniers have employed a wide range of arguments against taking action on climate change, some of which contradict each other. For example, they have claimed that:

• Climate change is not occurring
• The global climate is actually getting colder
• The global climate is getting warmer, but not because of human activities
• The global climate is getting warmer, in part because of human activities, but this will create greater benefits than costs
• The global climate is getting warmer, in part because of human activities, but the impacts are not sufficient to require any policy response

After 15 years of increasingly definitive scientific studies attesting to the reality and significance of global climate change, the deniers' tactics have shifted. Many deniers no longer deny that climate change is happening, but instead argue that the cost of taking action is too high—or even worse, that it is too late to take action. All of these arguments are false and are rejected by the scientific community at large.


To gain an understanding of the level of scientific consensus on climate change, one study examined every article on climate change published in peer-reviewed scientific journals over a 10-year period. Of the 928 articles on climate change the authors found, not one of them disagreed with the consensus position that climate change is happening and is human-induced.

The so called "Non-govervmental International Panel on Climate Change" that bad anonymous referred to is one of these tiny groups that seeks to debate in the media and try to influence the public rather than discussing their position at climate conferences or publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals. It is a brash lie that the "NIPCC" has "thousands of peer-reviewed studies" backing up its claims, they in fact have published virtually no peer-reviewed studies contradicting the overwhelming scientific concensus that global warming is real and man-made. 97% of all research on the topic concludes global warming is real and man-made.

March 31, 2014 3:23 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The NIPCC is one of those groups that gives itself an authoritative sounding name similar to the real scientific group in order to confuse the public into thinking they are the much larger and well recognized scientific authority. In fact the NIPCC is a tiny group of global warming deniers run by Fred Singer whose oppinions are rejected by the global scientific community at large.

Singer has a long history of rejecting peer-reviewed and independently confirmed scientific evidence in his claims concerning public health and environmental issues.

Singer released the "report" bad anonymous refers to in 2008. Climate scientists from NASA, Stanford, and Princeton who spoke to ABC about the report dismissed it as "fabricated nonsense."

On September 18, 2013, the NIPCC's fourth report, entitled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science, was published.[67] As with previous NIPCC reports, environmentalists criticized it upon its publication; for example, David Suzuki wrote that it was "full of long-discredited claims, including that carbon dioxide emissions are good because they stimulate life.". After the report received favorable coverage from Fox News Channel's Doug McKelway, climate scientists Kevin Trenberth and Michael Oppenheimer criticized this coverage, with Trenberth calling it "irresponsible journalism" and Oppenheimer calling it "flat out wrong."

March 31, 2014 3:41 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Over 6 million people have signed up for Obamacare and its projected that by the end of the day there'll be 6.9 to 7 million signed up. Combined with the medicade expansion there are now 9.5 million previously uninsured Americans with insurance.

The earliest opportunity Republicans might have to repeal the law will be in January 2017 and by then there are projected to be 34 million people covered. Realisitcally speaking there's no way Republicans at that time are going to want to run on repealing the law, let alone actually have the ability to do so.

That's a large voting block that Republicans can't afford to alienate in 2016. Republicans know it too but are just talking about repealing it now to try to help them in the upcoming mid-term elections.

Obamacare is here to stay! Its a big win for Americans!

March 31, 2014 4:44 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In July the Heartland global warming denial organization is holding a climate change skeptics conference in Las Vegas. The promises an all star line-up of scientists including a couple of architects, a medical officer from the Texas Sheriff's office, a massage therapist with a B.A. in pyschology and the aformentioned Fred Singer of the NIPCC rump group, a man Rolling Stone called "the grandaddy of fake science" for his theories that the hole in the ozone layer wasn't a big deal and his conclusion that cigarette smoking was actually pretty safe.

This is the best they've got as the overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree climate change is real and man-made.

The latest IPCC (the real scientists) report on climate change originally stated that its going to cost poorer countries 100 billion per year to cope with the effects of climate change but that was taken out of the report at the insistance of the richer countries.

March 31, 2014 6:20 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In a new Washington Post/ABC poll for the first time more Americans support Obamacare than oppose it. 49% support the law and 48% are opposed.

Republican Lindsey Graham was on Fox news today and asked what the Republican alternative to Obamacare was and he said "I think its good for the Republican party to have a plan of its own that could insure Americans without having to lose your doctor. Let's start with the idea that pre-existing illnesses should not deny you coverage. That means you're going to have to have pools for the really sick but why would you want to deny somebody insurance because they got sick? Allowing children to stay on their parent's policies until they're 26 makes sense given this economy.".

Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, that's Obamacare! The same plan the Republicans originally applauded when the Heritage foundation unveilled it. Republicans now oppose their own plan because Obama introduced it and they're determined to repeal it and replace it with....Obamacare.

What a bunch of hypocrites!

March 31, 2014 6:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here it is:

Q: Overall, do you support or oppose the federal law making changes to the health care system?

Results:
All adults 49% Support, 48% Oppose
Registered Voters 48% Support, 50% Oppose

April 01, 2014 7:21 AM  
Anonymous Climate change is costly said...

Billion-Dollar Weather/Climate Disasters

"Overview

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is the Nation's Scorekeeper in terms of addressing severe weather/climate events in their historical perspective. As part of its responsibility of monitoring and assessing the climate, NCDC tracks and evaluates climate events in the U.S. and globally that have great economic and societal impacts. NCDC is frequently called upon to provide summaries of global and U.S. temperature and precipitation trends, extremes, and comparisons in their historical perspective. Found here are the weather/climate events that have had the greatest economic impact from 1980 to 2013. The U.S. has sustained 151 weather/climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2013). The total cost of these 151 events exceeds $1 trillion.

2013 in Context

In 2013, there were 7 weather and climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each across the United States. These events included five severe weather and tornado events, a major flood event, and the western drought / heat wave. Overall, these events killed 109 people and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted. Further data and figures on individual events will be announced later in the year.

Methodology and Data Sources

In 2012, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reviewed its methodology on how NCDC develops Billion-Dollar Disasters. NCDC held a workshop with economic experts and are working with a consulting partner to examine possible inaccuracy and biases in the data sources and methodology used in developing the loss assessments from 1980-2012. This will ensure more consistency with the numbers NCDC provides on a yearly basis and give more confidence in the year-to-year comparison of information. Another outcome is a published peer-reviewed article "U.S. Billion-dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Data Sources, Trends, Accuracy and Biases."

In performing these disaster cost assessments these statistics were taken from a wide variety of sources and represent, to the best of our ability, the estimated total costs of these events -- that is, the costs in terms of dollars that would not have been incurred had the event not taken place. Insured and uninsured losses are included in damage estimates. Sources include the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture, other U.S. government agencies, individual state emergency management agencies, state and regional climate centers, media reports, and insurance industry estimates."


Billion Dollar Events

Disaster Mapping

April 01, 2014 7:34 AM  
Anonymous Lean back, way back said...

OK, I see you've gone silent about ACA-compliant plans vs. the plan your employer offers. Apparently you have decided that whatever the limit of your out of pocket limits in 2013 and 2014 , which include your deductibles, will remain your little secret.

I'll take that as your admission I'm right. Either your out of pocket limits have come down or you have a non-ACA compliant insurance policy again this year.

Did you see Dana Milbank's column this morning?

I think you and your sister might want to discuss who's the more conservative woman, your stay at home sister or second income you. Apparently, per Heritage Foundation, your stay at home sister is the ideal woman.

The Heritage Foundations wants women to lean back, not in.

Conservatives to women: Lean back

"The conservative minds of the Heritage Foundation have found a way for Republicans to shrink the gender gap: They need to persuade more women to get their MRS degrees.

The advocacy group held a gathering of women of the right Monday afternoon to mark the final day of Women’s History Month — and the consensus was that women ought to go back in history. If Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg’s mantra is “lean in,” these women were proposing that women lean back: get married, take care of kids and let men earn the wages.

“We’re gathered to celebrate Women’s History Month, but I don’t celebrate Women’s History Month,” announced writer Mona Charen, one of the panelists. “It doesn’t interest me whether a person who happens to share my chromosomes sits in the Oval Office. It doesn’t interest me how many women members of the Senate there are.”

What interests Charen and the other women on the stage is their belief, as Charen put it, that “feminism has done so much damage to happiness.” And the solution to this damage, it turns out, is matrimony — the same thing that will solve problems such as income inequality and the Republican Party’s standing among women.

“We should show concern for everybody by extending the marriage franchise to everybody,” panelist Mollie Hemingway proposed. “Everybody go out, right now, go get married if you’re not married,” she said to laughter, “and we should be able to solve all these problems.”

“If we truly want women to thrive,” Charen concurred, “we have to revive the marriage norm.”

This, they argued, also would have the felicitous effect of making women more Republican. Charen argued that “it is the decline of marriage that is the lodestar for why people’s voting behavior is what it is,” and Hemingway asserted that “we do not have a sex gap here in voting. We have a marriage gap.”

As a matter of statistics, this is true: President Obama’s 11-point win among women in 2012 came entirely from his 36-point advantage among unmarried women. But Republicans will be waiting a long time if they think they can improve their fortunes by persuading more women to get hitched. Essentially, they’re saying that Republicans aren’t the ones who need to change — women are.

There’s a running debate on the trade-offs of feminism, but this sort of traditional assault on the movement is unlikely to boost the GOP’s standing among women. If Republicans want to appeal to more unmarried women, they might reconsider the no-exception opposition to abortion and, increasingly, birth control that dominates the party. Otherwise, a throwback strategy of convincing unmarried women that they have been misled by feminism is tantamount to convincing Hispanics that they have been led astray by immigration advocates or telling young voters that they have been deceived by the gay rights movement.

“A lot of times you hear ‘feminism’ and you think, ‘Conservatives, feminism — isn’t that an oxymoron?’ ” Heritage’s Angelise Schrader, the panel’s moderator, said at the start. Her fellow panelists confirmed that this is indeed an oxymoron.”..."

April 01, 2014 9:40 AM  
Anonymous Lean back, way back, continued said...

"...Charen went on at length about feminism’s “disdain for family life” and its “bogus and much-debunked statistics,” including the claim that women earn 77 percent of what men do for the same work. Indeed, she said, “it’s men and boys who are falling behind,” with male wages and workforce participation declining “alarmingly.”

Inverting Gloria Steinem, she argued that “women need feminism like a fish needs a bicycle.” Said Charen: “Women know that because of the nature of their bodies, because they carry and bear children and nurse and nurture children, that they need protection and support. . . . Feminism disdains this natural urge.” Feminism also, Charen said, creates college campuses “where hooking up is considered normal and date rape is difficult to prevent.”

Karin Agness, founder of the conservative Network of Enlightened Women, took issue with Sandberg’s “Lean In” and “Ban Bossy” efforts, which encourage women and girls to be assertive. “Rather than try to ban words like ‘bossy,’ let’s try to promote real leadership skills, like developing a thick skin,” she said.

The reality, the panelists at Heritage said, is that women are less happy than they were before the feminist movement, that women enjoy domestic work, and that most moms would prefer not to work full time, if at all.

Maybe so. But it will take some convincing. The audience for these pronouncements Monday was small and mostly male, many of them apparently Heritage interns.

“Wow,” said John Hilboldt, Heritage’s lectures director, as he opened the session. “Where are all the ladies?”

It’s a question Republicans may be asking for a long time."


Where are all those ladies who "enjoy domestic work" and can just close their eyes.

April 01, 2014 9:40 AM  
Anonymous can smell a phony said...

To Lean back way back...
I work, not for the government, therefore, I don't have time to write endless posts on blogs as I
see you do. Do you have a job?
My out of pocket limit is $5,000 per person, $10,000 household.
My plan is not ACA compliant.
I was surprised too, but, it still
was much cheaper than Obamacare and both were very expensive.
Unless you are unemployed, dabbling in art at home, or illegal, or have a part time job,
the Obamacare premiums are high.
I did look and this was the conclusion. Can't wait for 2016.

April 01, 2014 11:01 AM  
Anonymous just ask Nate Silver said...

"The U.S. has sustained 151 weather/climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2013). The total cost of these 151 events exceeds $1 trillion.

In 2013, there were 7 weather and climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each across the United States. These events included five severe weather and tornado events, a major flood event, and the western drought / heat wave. Overall, these events killed 109 people and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted."

to begin with, the IPCC itself has admitted that there are few weather disasters thus far that can be attributed to global warming, specifically saying that the current California drought is not outside the normal envelope for the area

but, assume for a second they are all a result of anthropogenic global warming

a trillion over 33 years?

every one of Obama's deficits for the first four years was more than that

his election would then be a greater disaster than climate change

7 billion in 2013?

multiplying times 33 gets 231 billion so 2013 was below average

by a lot

global warming seems to have reduced the costliness of adverse weather

do the alarmists ever stop and think?

April 01, 2014 11:38 AM  
Anonymous just ask Nate Silver said...

The IPCC released phase two of their four-part report they compile every so often to make recommendations to policymakers the world over about how much the world is warming and what to do about it. This latest issue is replete with dire warnings about food security and declining crop yields, economic shocks, drought and water supplies, regional conflicts and war, and etcetera. So, in a nutshell, the same type of catastrophic warnings that progressive environmentalists have been prophesying for decades now, without any such calamities coming to pass.

The IPCC has several available explanations for the pause in warming we’ve been experiencing since the late 1990′s, ranging from particles from volcanic eruptions blocking out the sun’s heat to the accrued warmth currently residing within the depths of the oceans — but the point is, climate science is an extremely complex and nuanced science with a million different factors going into it, and we don’t quite know what we don’t quite know. That’s not to say that climate change isn’t a problem and that human activity couldn’t be some of the impetus behind it, but when climate scientists and globalist bureaucrats make huge, sweeping, and obviously politicized conclusions that they insist are absolutely beyond dispute and that the science is therefore “settled,” they kind of discredit their own cause, no?

April 01, 2014 11:49 AM  
Anonymous just ask Nate Silver said...

Like when, say, they dismiss one of their own as “fringe” for daring to step outside the very tiny box they have decided is the only way to think about climate change?

Via the Financial Times:

Two of the world’s leading climate researchers have clashed over a report on the impact of global warming and rising sea levels. The chief author of the study by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said an economist drafting a key chapter had made “meaningful errors” that had to be fixed and was on the “fringe” of the scientific community’s thinking.

Chris Field, professor of environmental studies at Stanford University in California, made the comments about Professor Richard Tol of the University of Sussex in the UK, a senior author of the report’s chapter on climate change’s economic impacts.

Professor Tol revealed last week that he had asked for his name to be removed from the study’s summary because he believed it was “alarmist” and included “silly” statements about the vulnerability of people in war zones to climate change. …

“When the IPCC does a report, what you get is the community’s position. Richard Tol is a wonderful scientist but he’s not at the centre of the thinking. He’s kind of out on the fringe,” Prof Field said.

The good news is that the UN actually did actually take a slightly more conservative stance this time around with making precise predictions and admitting to some of the vast areas of uncertainty to which climate science is prone. Even while it exaggerates the amount and causes of warming, the IPCC did get a little more cautious with the effects.

The actual report, known as AR5-WGII, is less frightening than its predecessor seven years ago.

The 2007 report was riddled with errors about Himalayan glaciers, the Amazon rain forest, African agriculture, water shortages and other matters, all of which erred in the direction of alarm.

It puts the overall cost at less than 2% of GDP for a 2.5 degrees Centigrade temperature increase during this century. This is vastly less than the much heralded prediction of Lord Stern, who said climate change would cost 5%-20% of world GDP in his influential 2006 report for the British government.

The forthcoming report apparently admits that climate change is not the only environmental problem that matters and leans toward adapting to it rather than preventing it. Yet the report still assumes 70% more warming by the last decades of this century than the best science now suggests. This is because of an overreliance on models rather than on data in the first section of the IPCC report, published in September 2013.

And the group’s dislike of dissent hardly breeds confidence in their methods or their motivations. These guys would be doing themselves a huge favor if they would just abandon the catastrophe-or-bust alarmism strategy on which they’ve been relying for years and the subsequent recommendations that require the world’s economies to conscientiously contract to save the planet — rather than more marginal and growth-oriented ideas that could actually convince more people to get on board.

April 01, 2014 11:49 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

A former Republican legislator from Michigan named Chris Ward is apologizing for voting against marriage equality when he was in the state House in 2004. He’s asking his fellow Republicans to do the same, telling them that they’re on the wrong side of history and it’s time to stop the anti-gay crusade.

Fellow Republicans, it is time to say congratulations to the many, many same sex couples all over Michigan who have won at least a short moment of equal access to the liberties and justice afforded to all the other adults citizens of our state.

Let us be gracious now, at least in this late stage in the game, drop the pretense and stop delaying the inevitable. There is no doubt we have written off an entire block of people from voting GOP for the foreseeable future. We deserve that. The world has changed, everyone knows it. Making people wait for their fundamental rights to live a life as they choose is just mean spirited…

Looking back now, one of the things that bothers me the most about the whole episode was how dehumanizing it was. It was just politics. But it wasn’t politics..these were people.

We singled out a whole group of people, most of whom just wanted to be left alone, to forcefully discriminate against them for short term political benefit.

All around us were our friends, COLLEAGUES, family members, highly valued staff members and people we care about who this clearly was going to hurt. Nobody seemed to think a thing of it. Like most people, including my constituents, I wasn’t comfortable with same-sex marriage at that point but I didn’t even bother to throw out a “hey we shouldn’t be doing this” or “look what we are doing to the people we care about”…

My own particular purgatory is to be forever doomed to be on the wrong side of history...There can be no doubt at this point, same sex couples will have their rights recognized. It is only a matter of time.

Let’s do the grown-up thing and help heal the wounds we created. At the very least, let’s get the heck out of the way.

April 01, 2014 12:38 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Bad anonymous (Wyatt) is back to his usual highly dishonest spin about the IPCC's current report on global warming. Let's look at what he said and compare it to with what the IPCC report actually said:

Wyatt said "The actual [current IPCC] report, known as AR5-WGII, is less frightening than its predecessor seven years ago. The 2007 report was riddled with errors about Himalayan glaciers, the Amazon rain forest, African agriculture, water shortages and other matters, all of which erred in the direction of alarm."


What the IPCC actually said in their most recent report:

""Things are worse than we had predicted" in 2007, when the group of scientists last issued this type of report, said report co-author Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University in Bangladesh. "We are going to see more and more impacts, faster and sooner than we had anticipated."

Bad anonymous/Wyatt said "[The IPCC report] puts the overall cost at less than 2% of GDP for a 2.5 degrees Centigrade temperature increase during this century. This is vastly less than the much heralded prediction of Lord Stern, who said climate change would cost 5%-20% of world GDP in his influential 2006 report for the British government."

The IPCC report actually echoes an earlier U.N. climate science panel that said if greenhouse gases continue to rise, the world is looking at another about 6 or 7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.5 or 4 degrees Celsius) of warming by 2100. The IPCC Summary does additionally warn that warming higher than 2°C might shove the climate system over tipping points that would produce substantially larger losses to GDP. The IPCC says the economic models on which the 2% of GDP number depends do not "account for catastrophic changes, tipping points and many other factors."

The IPCC report while describing the 0.2 to 2 percent figure as "incomplete," it concludes that GDP losses "are more likely than not to be greater," rather than smaller, than this range. The U.N. panel also says there are large differences between and within countries — some will be affected much more significantly than others.

April 01, 2014 1:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh me gursh

lazy Priya (Randy) is in a state of denial

maybe get to this tonight

April 01, 2014 2:57 PM  
Anonymous Leaning in, moving forward said...

"To Lean back way back...
I work, not for the government, therefore, I don't have time to write endless posts on blogs as I
see you do.

Well you had plenty of time to bitch about "an Hispanic lady at CVS" and "unemployed and illegal aliens" a couple of days ago, and you had plenty of time today to bitch about "unemployed," "illegal"s, those "dabbling in art at home," and people with "part time job"s.

In the past, you had plenty of time to whine and bitch about your stay-at-home sister and other siblings, too.

"Do you have a job?"

Yes I have a job as does my spouse, jobs we created for ourselves. Our small business has enabled us to raise our family and to provide employment to several families over the past 35 years we've been running it.

"
My plan is not ACA compliant."

Aha, finally the truth!

I was right!

The health insurance plan provided by your employer for 2014 is non-ACA compliant.

And I'm right about this too: You can do much better at Healthcare.gov

I do not qualify for any subsidy for my Obamacare and at the Maryland exchange, was offered over 40 plans, ranging in cost and coverage. Plenty of them had very low premiums (under $300/month) but none of them had out-of pocket limits over what the ACA allows - $6350 for individuals and $12,700 for families no matter how many people.

Even if I hit that limit (I won't, I'm very healthy), my total cost of premiums plus OOP limit (which includes the deductible and co-pays) will be under $10K

My 2013 non-ACA compliant health care family plan charged the deductible for every person on the policy before it started paying and it did that every year.

So tell us some more truth -- does your non-ACA compliant 2014 health insurance plan expect you to pay that $1500 deductible for you, your spouse, and each your kids under 26 still covered by it before its coverage begins?

Since it's ACA-non compliant, does your 2014 health insurance cover your kids through age 26?

"Unless you are unemployed, dabbling in art at home, or illegal, or have a part time job,
the Obamacare premiums are high."

That a lie. There were over 40 plans available to me when I applied for my Obamacare, and the monthly premiums ranged from under $300 to over $1200 per month with varying deductibles, coverage, co-pays, and out-of-pocket limits.

FYI, I had a complete physical in Jan. 2014 under my new ACA plan. Mammogram, bone density test, pelvic exam, pap smear, blood and urine analysis and all of that cost me exactly nothing, not a single penny other than my very low 2014 ACA premium.

"a trillion over 33 years?

every one of Obama's deficits for the first four years was more than that"

And why was the deficit so bad once Obama got into the White House?

Because the Bush tax cuts, unfunded Medicare prescription drug donut hole, and 2 wars, one of which was supposed to be paid for by oil revenues that never did.

Bush spent the Clinton surplus like a drunken frat boy and kept right on spending with his Congressional GOP enablers.

How soon you GOP supporters forget these inconvenient facts.

April 01, 2014 4:00 PM  
Anonymous HobbyLobby invests in contraceptives said...

Hobby Lobby's Hypocrisy: The Company's Retirement Plan Invests in Contraception Manufacturers

"When Obamacare compelled businesses to include emergency contraception in employee health care plans, Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores, fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court. The Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, the company's owners argued, forced them to violate their religious beliefs. But while it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm's owners cite in their lawsuit.

Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).

Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby's retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby's health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.

These companies include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer, which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla and Mirena; AstraZeneca, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell...

...for years, Hobby Lobby's health insurance plans did cover Plan B and Ella. It was only in 2012, when the Greens considered filing a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, that they dropped these drugs from the plan...

...The information on Hobby Lobby's 401(k) investments is included in the company's 2013 annual disclosure to the Department of Labor. The records contain a list, dated December 31, 2012, of 24 funds that were included in its employer-sponsored retirement plan. MorningStar, an investment research firm, provided Mother Jones with the names of the companies in nine of those funds as of December 31, 2012. Each fund's portfolio consists of at least dozens if not hundreds of different holdings.

All nine funds—which have assets of $73 million, or three-quarters of the Hobby Lobby retirement plan's total assets—contained holdings that clashed with the Greens' stated religious principles.

Hobby Lobby and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the conservative group that provided Hobby Lobby with legal representation, did not respond to questions about these investments or whether Hobby Lobby has changed its retirement plan..."

April 01, 2014 5:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Russian-American gay rights activist believes Putin is trying to build a new anti-West empire, based on the rejection of gay rights

interesting, but even more interesting is her admission that the purpose of gay marriage is to destroy the institution of marriage:

"The Washington Post published a very interesting op-ed by Masha Gessen headlined “Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world.” Gessen is in many ways the perfect person to write a piece like this. Deeply knowledgeable about Russian history, she’s the author of “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” passionate political biography.

Gessen’s piece revisits ground covered here in David Ernst’s “Putin’s Right Hook: The Strategic Implications of Russia’s New Conservatism,” which looked at how Russia is challenging Western hegemony on ideological terms.

Gessen begins by noting that Obama said on Wednesday that Russia leads no global ideology. Yet that’s exactly what Vladimir Putin hopes to do, she says, citing a speech he gave to parliament in December:

“We know that there are more and more people in the world who support our position on defending traditional values,” he asserted. Russia’s role is to “prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.” In short, Putin intends to save the world from the West. He has started with Crimea. When he says he is protecting ethnic Russians in Ukraine, he means he is protecting them from the many terrible things that come from the West. A few days after the December address, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Duma committee on foreign relations, defined that threat on the floor of the chamber: “European Union advisers in practically every ministry of any significance, control over the flow of finances and over national programs, and a broadening of the sphere of gay culture, which has become the European Union’s official policy.”

Gessen says that the “anti-gay agenda may seem like a thin basis for forming a militant international alliance of state-actors, but it has great unifying potential when framed in terms of a broader anti-Western effort and, indeed, a civilizational mission.”

Indeed. And I’m glad that Gessen is raising the alarm about Putin’s unifying message and the threat we face from it.

It’s just kind of weird coming from her. She said publicly in 2012:

It’s a no-brainer that gay people should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist… Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there -because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out thirty years ago. I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally… I met my new partner, and she had just had a baby, and that baby’s biological father is my brother, and my daughter’s biological father is a man who lives in Russia, and my adopted son also considers him his father. So the five parents break down into two groups of three . . . . And really, I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage.

These comments were received generally favorably by fellow activists in the gay marriage community and I don’t recall anyone of note denouncing her views expressed above.

Various people have various ideas about the importance of private institutions in a free society. But Putin’s scaremongering about the West being thrown into a chaos that will be deeply harmful to children is much harder to fight in light of Gessen’s own comments and the reality they reveal, no?"

April 01, 2014 6:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The most dynamic and influential religion of the past hundred years has not been Christianity, let alone Judaism, the two religions that created the Western world. Nor has it been Islam. It has been Leftism.

Leftism has influenced the literary, academic, media, and, therefore, the political elite far more than any other religion. It has taken over Western schools from elementary through graduate.

For most of that time, various incarnations of Marxism have been the dominant expressions -- and motivators -- of Leftism: specifically, income redistribution, material equality and socialism. They are still powerful aspects of the left, but with the downfall of most communist regimes, other left-wing expressions have generated even more passion: first feminism and then environmentalism.

Nothing comes close to environmentalism in generating left-wing enthusiasm. It is the religion of our time. For the left, the earth has supplanted patriotism. This was largely inevitable in Europe, given its contempt for nationalism since the end of World War I and even more so since World War II. But it is now true for the elites in America as well.

This was most graphically displayed by the infamous Time magazine cover of April 21, 2008 that altered the most iconic photograph in American history -- Joe Rosenthal's picture of the marines planting the flag on Iwo Jima.

Instead of the American flag, the Time cover depicted the marines planting a tree. The caption on the cover read:

"How to Win the War on Global Warming." In other words, just as German and Japanese fascism was the enemy in World War II, global warming is the enemy today. And instead of allegiance to the nation's flag, now our allegiance must be to nature.

April 01, 2014 6:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is the antithesis of the Judeo-Christian view of the world that has dominated Western civilization for all of the West's history. The Judeo-Christian worldview is that man is at the center of the universe; nature was therefore created for man. Nature has no intrinsic worth other than man's appreciation and use of it.

Worship of nature was the pagan worldview, a worship that the Hebrew Bible was meant to destroy. The messages of the Creation story in Genesis were that:

1) God created nature. God is not in nature, and nature is not God. Nature is nothing more than His handiwork.

Therefore it is He, not nature, that is to be worshipped. The pagan world held nature in esteem; its gods were gods of nature (not above nature).

2) Nature cannot be worshipped because nature is amoral, whereas God is moral.

3) All of creation had one purpose: the final creation, the human being.

With the demise of the biblical religions that have provided the American people with their core values since their country's inception, we are reverting to the pagan worldview. Trees and animals are venerated, while man is simply one more animal in the ecosystem -- and largely a hindrance, not an asset.

On February 20, a pit bull attacked a 4-year-old boy, Kevin Vicente, leaving the boy with a broken eye socket and a broken jaw. Kevin will have to undergo months, perhaps years, of additional reconstructive surgeries. A Facebook page was set up to raise funds. But it wasn't set up for Kevin. It was set up for the dog. The "Save Mickey" page garnered over 70,000 "likes," and raised more than enough money to provide legal help to prevent the dog from being euthanized. There were even candlelight vigils and a YouTube video plea for the dog.

The non-profit legal group defending Mickey is the Lexus Project. According to CBS News, "the same group fought earlier this year for the life of a dog that fatally mauled a toddler in Nevada."

This is the trend. Nature over man.

This is why environmentalists oppose the Keystone pipeline. Nature over man. The pipeline will provide work for thousands of people and it will enable Canada and the United States to increasingly break away from dependence on other countries for their energy needs. But to the true believers who make up much of the environmentalist movement, none of that matters. Just as they didn't care about the millions of Africans who died of malaria as a result of those environmentalists' efforts to ban DDT.

One of the fathers of the green movement is James Lovelock, the scientist who originated the Gaia hypothesis of the earth as a single living organism. This past Sunday, the British newspaper, the Guardian, reported that, "Talking about the environmental movement, Lovelock says: 'It's become a religion, and religions don't worry too much about facts.'"

He also told the interviewer "that he had been too certain about the rate of global warming in his past book ... that fracking and nuclear power should power the UK, not renewable sources such as wind farms."

As G.K. Chesterton prophesied over a hundred years ago: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything."

April 01, 2014 6:57 PM  
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April 02, 2014 12:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

An oil flood through an Arkansas subdivision on March 29 is just the most recent example of pipeline problems in the U.S. In recent weeks, months and years diesel has leaked from a pipeline into wetlands near Salt Lake City; oil has spilled into the Yellowstone River in Montana; and about 20,000 barrels of oil have spewed into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The question: Is the problem the pipelines themselves or what they carry?

The answer may be an unfortunate combination of the two. Certainly, the infrastructure has issues. The U.S. is crisscrossed by more than four million kilometers of such pipelines, many decades old. These pipelines spring hundreds of leaks every year, most small. The pipelines can fail for reasons ranging from a backhoe inadvertently striking one to the slow but steady weakening from corrosion. "It's not a matter of if, but when," says Susan Connolly, a resident of Marshall, Mich., right near where the Kalamazoo River spill occurred in 2010 as a result of external corrosion.

Critics charge that pipelines carrying diluted bitumen, or "dilbit"—a heavy oil extracted from tar sands mined in northern Alberta—pose a special risk because, compared with more conventional crude, they must operate at higher temperatures, which have been linked to increased corrosion. These pipelines also have to flow at higher pressures that may contribute to rupture as well. Environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) notes that pipelines in the upper Midwest that routinely carry oil from tar sands have spilled 3.6 times more oil per pipeline mile than the U.S. average. The Arkansas and Kalamazoo accidents both involved dilbit.

The chemistry of the tar sands oil could contribute to corrosion as well. In processing, the tar sands are boiled to separate the bitumen from the surrounding sand and water, and then mixed with diluent—light hydrocarbons produced along with natural gas—to make the oil less viscous and able to flow. But even so, the resulting dilbit is among the lowest in hydrogen as well as the most viscous, sulfurous and acidic form of oil produced today.

Some think the Arkansas spill could have resulted from the combination of aged infrastructure and added stress from dilbit, although an exact cause has yet to be determined. The breached Pegasus Pipeline involved in the Arkansas incident can carry nearly 100,000 barrels of oil per day from Illinois to Texas. Originally constructed in the 1940s to bring Texas crude oil up to Illinois, it had been reversed in recent years to stream dilbit. The operator, ExxonMobil, retrofitted the 50-centimeter tube to compensate for the demands of pushing tar sand oil through in the opposite direction, but the higher temperatures and pressures may nonetheless have contributed to the rupture or sped up preexisting corrosion, suggest critics such as NRDC's Anthony Swift.

The sour smell of dilbit is likely to remain in the air of Mayflower, Ark., until all the diluent evaporates. "Before you get into town, you can already smell the oil," says Glen Hooks of the Sierra Club Arkansas, who visited the spill site. "There is no reason to trust oil companies when they say pipelines are safe when there's been spill after spill after spill."

The mishap also highlights some of the concerns around the building of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which could carry 830,000 barrels per day of dilbit or other tar sands products 2,700 kilometers from Alberta to Texas. That pipeline would incorporate the latest technologies, such as epoxy coatings and electrical current to reduce corrosion. Yet, even brand-new pipelines can spring a leak: TransCanada's Keystone I Pipeline, which began carrying dilbit from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest in 2010, has already suffered 14 different leaks (pdf).

April 02, 2014 7:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ted Cruz asks his Facebook friends about Obamacare, gets an earful

"The Olympiad of officials and institutions reaching out to the public via social media and not hearing what they expected has a new champion: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Back on March 24, Cruz posted an informal survey on his verified senatorial Facebook page. It read: "Quick poll: Obamacare was signed into law four years ago yesterday. Are you better off now than you were then? Comment with YES or NO!"

It's probably fair to say that he didn't expect the tsunami of "YES" votes that have shown up on the page among the 47,000 that Facebook says have been posted.

Respondents have listed, among other things, their newfound ability to obtain coverage despite preexisting medical conditions, the right of young adults to stay on their parents' policies to age 26, lower premiums and the end of lifetime benefit limits.

Some posted impolite remarks about Cruz's personality or political positions. And some -- rather tactlessly, we thought -- observed that Cruz himself isn't subject to Obamacare. He gets his coverage through Goldman Sachs, where his wife is an executive. But the general tenor of remarks is that the Affordable Care Act is a good thing, that Cruz should get out of its way already and that, if anything, he should be working to improve it, not overturn it.

Cruz's experience with social media outreach is reminiscent of a couple of other high-profile efforts that didn't turn out the way their sponsors expected. In October, Fix the Debt, the plutocrat-backed front group for deficit-cutters, staged a question-and-answer session on Twitter, evidently hoping to instill the younger generation with its message that Social Security and Medicare were a plot by seniors to land the millennial generation in the poorhouse.

Didn't play out that way. The group's Twitter feed was inundated with impertinent queries ("What's more popular at your board meetings, the blood of workers or tears of homeless seniors? Asking for a friend.")

JPMorgan Chase plainly failed to learn from Fix the Debt's experience when it scheduled a Twitter Q&A with one of its investment banking chiefs a month later. As sample questions rolled in during the run-up to the chat ("Did you always want to be part of a vast, corrupt criminal enterprise or did you 'break bad'?"), the bank hastily canceled the event.

And now Cruz. The tea party favorite surely expected his faithful followers to fill his feed with complaints about the Affordable Care Act as the thin end of the wedge of socialism hammered into the American system, as a Titanic about to hit an iceberg, as a massive ripoff and boondoggle. What he learned instead is that any time you venture into the social-media multiverse, what you see may surprise you.

The question is whether Cruz will take his "friends'" responses to heart. Here's our informal quick poll:

"Will Ted Cruz change his mind about Obamacare based on what he's heard from followers? Comment with YES or NO!""

April 02, 2014 8:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

free speech returns to America:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/02/supreme-court-mccutcheon_n_5076732.html?1396451686&icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D460363

April 02, 2014 12:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

United States of Oligarchy, of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.

April 02, 2014 3:08 PM  
Anonymous Free Speech in Texas said...

TEACHERS SEXTING WITH MINORS IS FREE SPEECH IN TEXAS

April 03, 2014 8:39 AM  
Anonymous run, don't walk from barack said...

Georgia Democrat Michelle Nunn is touting her ties to former President George H.W. Bush in her first ad.

Nunn, a top Senate Democratic recruit who's counting on her bipartisan appeal to win her race in the conservative state, talks of her work running Bush's Points of Light charity foundation.
"Some people ask me why, with all the dysfunction in Washington, I'm running for Senate. In the end, I think it comes down to me being an optimist," she says in the ad, which features a photo of her with the former president. "While leading President Bush's Points of Light Foundation, we grew it into the world's largest organization dedicated to volunteer service. I've seen firsthand the power of individuals to work with businesses, charitable and religious organizations to make change."

Nunn, the daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), will face the winner of a crowded GOP Senate primary.


April 03, 2014 3:01 PM  
Anonymous "government of the many, not a government of the money" said...

In every part of the country, in every sort of political jurisdiction, citizens are casting ballots for referendum proposals supporting a Constitutional amendment to overturn US Supreme Court rulings that have tipped the balance toward big money.

In so doing, these citizens are taking the essential first step in restoring democracy.

On Tuesday, thirteen Wisconsin communities, urban and rural, liberal and conservative, Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning answered the call of constitutional reform. Even as groups associated with billionaire donors Charles and David Koch were meddling in local elections in the state, voters were demanding, by overwhelming margins, that the right to organize fair and open elections be restored.

It even happened in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s hometown of Delavan, where voters faced the question:

Shall the City of Delavan adopt the following resolution:

RESOLVED, the City of Delavan, Wisconsin, calls for reclaiming democracy from the corrupting effects of undue corporate influence by amending the United States Constitution to establish that:

1. Only human beings, not corporations, unions, nonprofit organizations nor similar associations are entitled to constitutional rights, and

2. Money is not speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we hereby instruct our state and federal representatives to enact resolutions and legislation to advance this effort.


76 percent of the Delavan residents who went to the polls voted “Yes!”

They were no alone. A dozen other Wisconsin communities faced referendums on the same day. Every town, village and city that was offered a choice voted to call on state and federal officials to move to amend the US Constitution so that citizens will again be able to organize elections in which votes matter more than dollars.

The Wisconsin votes provided the latest indication of a remarkable upsurge in support for bold action to renew the promise of American democracy. Since the Supreme Court began dismantling the last barriers to elite dominance of American politics, with its 2010 Citizens United decision, sixteen states and more than 500 communities have formally requested that federal officials begin the process of amending the constitution so that the court's wrongheaded rulings can be reversed.

Last fall, John Bonifaz, the co-founder and executive director of the reform group Free Speech For People, calculated that “In just three years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, we have come one third of the way to amending the US Constitution to reclaim our democracy and to ensure that people, not corporations, shall govern in America."

Since the start of 2014, however, the movement has seen a dramatic acceleration in the grassroots pressure for action. During the first weeks of March, forty-seven town meetings called for a constitutional amendment—in a move that put renewed pressure on the New Hampshire legislature to act on the issue.

It is the experience of big-money politics that has inspired renewed activism for reform.

April 04, 2014 8:30 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.7 percent and the labor force participation rate ticked up for the second consecutive month to 63.2 percent, from 63 percent.

The labor force growth is particularly good news. The household survey—which is the part of the report that measures directly from households—found that the labor force grew by 503,000 in March, a strong number. The past two months have shown hints that the strengthening economy will convince discouraged workers to reenter the labor market.

Economists had projected a year of stronger growth at the start of 2014 thanks to reduced fiscal headwinds. But throughout January and February, the economic data proved weak and worries grew that growth would once again fall short of expectations. Those concerns do not seem to have played out. An unusually cold and nasty winter seems to have been a major contributor to the weak data, shutting some major U.S. cities down for days at a time.

April 04, 2014 11:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mozilla Corp. co-founder Brendan Eich has resigned as CEO after a week of public pressure stemming from a campaign contribution he made six years ago. Eich supported the wrong cause; he supported California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

For some who favor the redefinition of marriage, tolerance appears to have been a useful rhetorical device along the way to eliminating dissent.

Eich, on the other hand, seems to have been quite tolerant. As Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker, commenting on the development, said of Eich’s 15 years at Mozilla:

"I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness.”

The outrageous treatment of Eich is the result of one private, personal campaign contribution to support marriage as a male-female union, a view affirmed at the time by President Barack Obama, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, and countless other prominent officials. After all, Prop 8 passed with the support of 7 million California voters.

So was President Obama a bigot back when he supported marriage as the union of a man and woman? And is characterizing political disagreement on this issue—no matter how thoughtfully expressed—as hate speech really the way to find common ground and peaceful co-existence?

Sure, the employees of Mozilla—which makes Firefox, the popular Internet browser— have the right to protest a CEO they dislike, for whatever reason. But are they treating their fellow citizens with whom they disagree civilly? Must every political disagreement be a capital case regarding the right to stand in civil society?

When Obama “evolved” on the issue just over a year ago, he insisted that the debate about marriage was legitimate. He said there are people of goodwill on both sides.

Supporters of marriage as we’ve always understood it (a male-female union) “are not coming at it from a mean-spirited perspective,” Obama explained. “They’re coming at it because they care about families.”

And “a bunch of ‘em are friends of mine,” the president added. “… you know, people who I deeply respect.”

Yet disrespect and intolerance seem increasingly to be the norm. For the forces that have worked for 20 years to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions, a principal strategy has been cultural intimidation—bullying others by threatening the stigma of being “haters” and “bigots.”

Unwilling to acknowledge this as a significant question on which reasonable people of goodwill can disagree, some advocates of redefining marriage increasingly characterize those with whom they disagree as “enemies of the human race.” They’ve sent a clear message: If you stand up for marriage, we will demonize and marginalize you.

In a series of instances we have seen the gatekeepers of civil society attack those who hold the view that marriage is between a man and a woman —Chick-fil-A, Barilla Pasta, Craig James (who was fired from ESPN), and “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson.

This kind of grotesque incivility is toxic for any democratic community. We can—we must—do better.

This debate is over the fundamental institution concerned with child welfare, and it deserves to be a robust one. Marriage is how societies from time immemorial have united a man and woman as husband and wife, to be mother and father to any children born of their union.

Those in favor of redefining marriage should refuse to participate in campaigns of intimidation. Reject the strategy of demonizing opponents. Call out friends when they bully those who stand up for the historic understanding of marriage.

April 04, 2014 1:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

With the clock ticking toward December 2015 and the last chance to conclude a global treaty at the Paris climate conference, the job of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to ratchet up the alarm. This it did in its report, released at the beginning of the week, on the impacts of climate change. It scored a bull’s-eye in the Financial Times: “Climate change harms food crops, says IPCC,” the headline ran. “Climate Signals, Growing Louder,” the New York Times opined, though the reality is that the volume is being turned up by the IPCC, not the climate itself. For the IPCC, this is mission accomplished — at considerable cost to the body’s residual credibility and integrity.

The IPCC’s Working Group II, tasked with assessing the risks and impacts of climate change, could have chosen to make amends for its previous effort in 2007, which was widely panned for bias and numerous errors. Such was the outcry over the 2007 report that the Dutch parliament ordered the country’s Environmental Assessment Agency to carry out an audit. It found that the working group was dismissive of the potential benefits of climate change, and it criticized the group’s process for being insufficiently transparent. Similarly, a report by the InterAcademy Council, chaired by Princeton’s Harold Shapiro, noted that the group’s Summary for Policymakers had been criticized “for various errors and for emphasizing the negative impacts of climate change.” The summary contained many statements that “are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly,” the Council said.

The summary, as the object of intensive political editing by government officials, is a document designed to generate talking points for sympathetic politicians and pundits to re-spin. Scientific coherence is not its goal. Instead of raising the bar in pursuit of objectivity, the current working group doubled down on its 2007 summary: It unfurls a series of distortions designed to magnify the threats, ignore the benefits, and downplay the possibility of adapting to climate change.

Its most eye-catching claim is that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields are more common to date than positive impacts are. This improbable claim finds only the weakest support in the main body of the report, with its qualification that climate change played a “minor role.” It is, the report states, “extremely difficult” to define a clear baseline from which to assess the impact of climate change, and many non-climate factors are often difficult to quantify.

April 04, 2014 1:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

More egregiously, the summary speaks of rapid price increases following climate extremes since the 2007 report. This negligence amounts to downright dishonesty, as the summary omits mention of one of the principal causes of the 2007–08 spike in food prices, which is highlighted in the main body of the report. It was not climate change that increased food costs, but climate policies in the form of increased use of food crops in biofuel production, exacerbated by higher oil prices and government embargoes on food exports.

In attempting to attribute changes in farm output to climate change, the IPCC makes heavy use of models linking climate to agriculture, most of which assume that farmers don’t change their behavior as the climate changes. Instead of relying on speculative models based on the condescending assumption that farmers are robots and don’t adapt, a more intelligent approach would be to examine how farmers and agricultural output have reacted to climate change in the past. But the IPCC rendered this approach impossible when it erased previous periods during which temperatures might have been higher than they are now (symbolized by the Hockey Stick in the IPCC’s 2001 report). In 2005, Jonathan Overpeck, one of the drafting authors of the 2014 summary, e-mailed a colleague, saying he intended to “deal a mortal blow” to the supposed “misuse” of the Medieval Warm Period in the 2007 report. Overpeck succeeded in his aim of getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period.

A feature of the Working Group II is that it is dominated by by natural scientists, led by Chris Field, a biologist from Stanford. “It is true we couldn’t find very many benefits of climate change,” Field told the Financial Times. “We worked really, really hard to identify every benefit we could find.” But not that hard. As journalist Matt Ridley wrote in the Wall Street Journal in January 2013 on the greening of the planet, analysis of satellite data shows that between 1982 and 2011, 20.5 percent of the world’s vegetated area got greener, while just 3 percent grew browner; the most likely causes are higher temperature, higher levels of carbon dioxide, or both.

Of the 71 authors of the summary, only three are economists; of these, one did not engage in work on the summary for the last two years; and one, Richard Tol, insisted his name be removed from the summary because it is, as he put it, too alarmist and it makes silly claims. The IPCC’s own analysis suggests that a warming of 2 degrees Celsius could cause losses equivalent to 0.2–2 percent of world gross domestic product. Climate change is not, Tol says, humanity’s biggest problem. Nor is it even our biggest environmental problem.

In 1972, the British government appointed an environmental commission chaired by a botanist that produced a report entitled “Pollution: Nuisance or Nemesis?” The majority, comprising scientists, thought civilization was facing nemesis. The minority, led by the economist Wilfred Beckerman, opted for nuisance. Two years later, Beckerman wrote of his experience on the commission, observing that scientists “do not have a minimal understanding of the way that the world of human beings operates.” As the IPCC has shown this week, plus ça change.

April 04, 2014 1:49 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

If FCPS were to nominate a superintendent who campaigned against marriage and contributed to Pat Buchanan, I would (anonymously)ask them not to hire such a person.

Would you want a person who opposed your marriage to be your boss?

rrjr

April 04, 2014 1:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Richard Tol, a professor of economics at Sussex University in England, has resigned as one of the writers of a climate report for the IPCC (the U.N.’s climate change organization), arguing that the drafts “became too alarmist.”Speaking to Reuters, Mr Tol explained his rebuke of the report’s climate change alarmism, while acknowledging that some other authors “strongly disagree with me.”Mr. Tol said many of the other authors “strongly disagree with me,” but that he found the IPCC’s emphasis on climate change alarmism — and focus on risk — came at the expense of providing solutions for the world’s governments to adapt and overcome.He said, for instance, farmers could grow new and different crops to offset any negative impacts from climate change that impacted food supplies.“They will adapt,” Mr. Tol said, Reuters reported. “Farmers are not stupid.”He also decried the fact the U.N. report downplayed possible economic benefits of warming. For example, he said: Warmer winters could mean fewer deaths among the elderly and possibly better crop growths in some areas.“It is pretty damn obvious there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them,” Mr. Tol said in the Reuters report.Adding to his disdain for the IPCC report which he had his name removed from, on the morning the report was released he tweeted:I found only 3 of the 4 Horsemen in the IPCC headlines #IPCCbingo— Richard Tol (@RichardTol) March 31, 2014This is not the first time something like this has happened, Richard Landsea, a U.S. meteorologist, pulled out of the last report published in 2007, accusing the IPCC of overstating evidence that global warming was aggravating Atlantic hurricanes. He turned out to be correct.

April 04, 2014 2:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"If FCPS were to nominate a superintendent who campaigned against marriage and contributed to Pat Buchanan, I would (anonymously)ask them not to hire such a person.

Would you want a person who opposed your marriage to be your boss?"

Robert, you are being a fool. Opposing the redefinition of marriage can just as easily be considered supporting it as opposing it.

This guy just agrees with you on what marriage is.

And you're wrong.

I'm assuming, however, that it's OK with you if, in places where marriage is considered a bi-gender institution, people get fired if they support gay marriage?

Gay advocates have tried this with the Chik-Fil-A and Duck Dynasty episodes and Americans have made it clear they tolerate dissent. Only in the Bay area would this fly.

April 04, 2014 2:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How quickly has liberty been transmuted into orthodoxy. For the entirety of human history, gay marriage was a veritable non-issue — a thought that had occurred seriously to nobody and for which there was neither a meaningful constituency nor measurable pressure. In the space of a decade it has moved from a fringe and novel proposition to a moral imperative — and, now, to fodder for the new inquisitors. That the issue has now achieved the approval of a narrow majority is to my mind no bad thing. That the movement’s more vocal champions have started bludgeoning their enemies one and a half minutes into their still-fragile victory speaks tremendously ill of them, and does not portend well for the republic.

Eich’s crime is to have contributed $1,000 to support Proposition 8, a successful 2008 California ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. Unlike the incumbent president of the United States, who not only affirmed in that year that he believed marriage to be between “one man and one woman” but contended that his religion required him to protect this definition, Eich has been relatively silent on the question of homosexuality. Still, we can presume rather reasonably that his contribution implied his support in that year, which puts him neatly in line with 52 percent of the California electorate, with Bill and Hillary Clinton, with the president and vice president, with the majority of the United States Congress, and with the American public — all of which, half a decade ago at least, were content to defend the status quo. One can only wonder at what manner of firings we would have to expect were we to rifle through the campaign contributions of other American leaders and chief executives. As is the proclivity of the technology industry, Mozilla evidently regards itself as especially open and unprejudiced — a beacon that burns bright in the night. But rare is the corporation that does not pay lip service to the very principles on which Mozilla appears so erroneously to pride itself. If we are to make long-term fealty to progressive doctrine the prerequisite to corporate management, America’s economy will fold overnight. Who is next, Torquemada?

April 05, 2014 8:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Owen Thomas, a tech gossip columnist and amateur tyrant was so vexed by Eich’s employment that he saw fit to issue what can only be described as a catechism. Among the commandments that Thomas etched onto his website were: “Stop saying that this was merely a private matter that won’t affect your work as Mozilla’s CEO”; “Say that whatever chain of logic led you to conclude that your personal views required you to support Proposition 8 was flawed, erroneous, incorrect”; “Say that you support the rights of people to enter into same-sex marriages everywhere”; and “Make a donation equal in amount to the money you gave to Proposition 8 and candidates who supported it to the Human Rights Campaign or another organization that fights for the civil rights of LGBT people.” Elsewhere, a Credoaction petition accrued 75,000 signatures behind the demand that “CEO Brendan Eich should make an unequivocal statement of support for marriage equality. If he cannot, he should resign. And if he will not, the board should fire him immediately.”

In other words, Eich must repent: Specifically, he must prostrate himself before his betters and announce publicly that he has sinned; he must thank his inquisitors for their forbearance and beg for their forgiveness and charity; and, perhaps most sinister of all, he must start tithing to a church of their choice lest he be refused redemption and ostracized like a common leper. And if he should refuse this call to betterment? Hie thee to a monastery, man! — or, better perhaps, to the public stocks at the bottom of the valley.

Notably missing from the hysteria was any explanation of precisely what Eich’s critics expected to happen were he left in charge. Instead, Mozilla’s press office merely asserted that the company was such a diverse, tolerant, and live-and-let-live sort of place that it was all but obliged to hound a man out of office because he possessed slightly different political views from the majority of its staff. Nowhere was it suggested that Eich would damage the company. Nowhere was it argued that he was personally hostile or unpleasant toward its employees. Nowhere was it implied that he would seek to discriminate against those about whom he might have personal qualms. Instead, we were left with the uncomfortable impression that the assembled denizens of the open-source browser industry are so pathetic and so delicate in their sensibilities that they cannot work alongside anybody who displays the temerity to disagree with them. Is that who we want to be?

Announcing its nasty little victory, Mozilla informed the public that the resignation had struck a blow for “free speech and equality.” Gay conformity agency GLAAD went one further, praising corporate America for demonstrating its commitment to providing an environment that is “inclusive, safe, and welcoming to all.” The most comprehensive commitment to toleration, however, came from a different source — from a man who assured spectators before he left office that he wished only to ensure “that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion.” That affirmation was penned by Brendan Eich, but it can’t be held to count for much, because he has the wrong sort of heart.

April 05, 2014 9:05 AM  
Anonymous Purify the world, error has no rights!! said...

Are you now or have you ever been against gay marriage? Shoot one Brendan Eich, teach 1,000:

"Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.

We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.

Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community.

Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.

Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all."

No you don’t, you liars. You don’t want contributions from anyone who doesn’t subscribe to gay-rights orthodoxy. You don’t care how they behave, or how they treat others. All you care about is what they think — or how they once thought, even after they have long since ceased being a threat to you and your political goals. You don’t want them in your workplace. No traditional Christians, Jews, or Muslims need apply — or if they do, they had better stay deeply closeted.

Is this really the world you fought for?

Meanwhile, a Google board member who is also a board member of the poverty relief charity World Vision today resigned from Google under pressure from gay rights activists.

This is the emerging face of gay-rights activism: hateful, intolerant, illiberal, persecutorial. They’re not going to stop at Brendan Eich. Because error has no rights, nor do people who hold to it.

Remember the Law of Merited Impossibility: What happened to Brendan Eich is not going to happen to you, and when it does, boy, will you deserve it.

April 05, 2014 9:35 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, it’s personal for me. The same principle that made Brendan Eich unemployable at Mozilla, despite his incredible achievements in his field, and his public pledge to treat gay people fairly, makes me and many of my friends and colleagues unemployable. I do not want to live in a world in which gay people get fired for their sexuality, when their sexuality has nothing to do with their ability to do their job. But the kind of people who ousted Brendan Eich want to live in a world in which expressing the “wrong” opinion about same-sex marriage makes one unemployable, even if that opinion has nothing to do with their ability to execute their professional responsibilities. This is not going to end well.

Michelle Goldberg, writing at The Nation, slams the anti-liberal left:

Call it left-wing anti-liberalism: the idea, captured by Herbert Marcuse in his 1965 essay“Repressive Tolerance,” that social justice demands curbs on freedom of expression. “It is possible to define the direction in which prevailing institutions, policies, opinions would have to be changed in order to improve the chance of a peace which is not identical with cold war and a little hot war, and a satisfaction of needs which does not feed on poverty, oppression, and exploitation,” he wrote. “Consequently, it is also possible to identify policies, opinions, movements which would promote this chance, and those which would do the opposite. Suppression of the regressive ones is a prerequisite for the strengthening of the progressive ones.”

Note here both the belief that correct opinions can be dispassionately identified, and the blithe confidence in the wisdom of those empowered to do the suppressing. This kind of thinking is only possible at certain moments: when liberalism seems to have failed but the right is not yet in charge. At such times, old-fashioned liberal values like free speech and robust, open debate seem like tainted adjuncts of an oppressive system, and it’s still possible for radicals to believe that the ideas suppressed as hateful won’t be their own.

UPDATE: Thank you, Andrew Sullivan, for this. Excerpt:

Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.

April 05, 2014 9:37 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In the heart of close-knit gay community, Luke Martel reflects the feelings of many when it comes to a strain of meningitis that has killed three gay men this year in Los Angeles County: He's concerned.

Martel, a gay bartender who moved to West Hollywood from New York City several months ago, called the deaths from the rare bacterial infection that can be passed by kissing, sharing utensils or coughing "a little scary" but said he doesn't plan to heed calls to get vaccinated.

"I might not take a drag off someone's cigarette now. And I'll run from people who don't cover their mouths when they cough," he said.

Health officials this week announced a cluster of cases of invasive meningococcal disease that sickened people in the LA area. Among those who fell ill, half were gay or bisexual, and the three-fourths who died were, half of them were HIV-positive.

Meningitis infections occasionally pop up in places where people interact closely. The risk of infection is considered low among any population, but those with compromised immune systems are more susceptible, health experts say.

"It is concerning," said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

The disease attacks the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. It can only be spread through close contact. Symptoms including fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea and vomiting that can develop within days of being exposed.

In recent years, gay communities in New York, Chicago and Toronto have seen outbreaks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New York has recorded 22 meningitis infections among gay men.

Several of the recent cases involved people who lived or socialized in North Hollywood and West Hollywood, an enclave for gays and lesbians where crosswalks are painted rainbow colors. Residents and visitors flock to bars and clubs lining Sunset Boulevard and displaying gay pride signs and flags.

Advocates have criticized the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health's response, noting the agency on Wednesday initially reported the cluster of cases and asked gay men to seek vaccinations, but the agency didn't mention the deaths.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding, public health director, defended the department, saying a separate letter went out to doctors notifying them of the deaths. "There was no effort to hold anything back," he said.

In light of the meningitis deaths, a clinic affiliated with the AIDS Project Los Angeles vaccinated four people, said UCLA's Klausner, who's the medical director there.

Many people asked about the disease Friday knew little or nothing about it. Frank Leigh, a 44-year-old online ad salesman, said he and his partner discussed it in passing but don't plan on getting vaccinated because they have been in a monogamous relationship for years.

April 05, 2014 12:19 PM  
Anonymous Clean up time! said...

"Mozilla Corp. co-founder Brendan Eich has resigned as CEO…
The outrageous treatment of Eich is…. "


Outrageous treatment? Not!
It was his own decision to resign as CEO.

"Richard Tol, a professor of economics at Sussex University in England, has resigned as one of the writers of a climate report for the IPCC"

It was also Tol's own decision to resign. Don't waste time worrying about him though. The Koch brothers will probably pay him just like they have been paying Siegfried Fred Singer at UVA to confuse the public with opinion pieces but to conduct no actual research and to not publish a shred of peer reviewed scientific research.

"In the heart of close-knit gay community, Luke Martel reflects the feelings of many when it comes to a strain of meningitis that has killed three gay men this year in Los Angeles County: He's concerned.

Here's the actual quote along with my link to the AP article containing the quote:

"In the heart of close-knit gay community, Luke Martel reflects the feelings of many when it comes to a strain of meningitis that has killed three gay men this year in Los Angeles County: He's concerned ***but not overly so***."

Lying Anon omitted from the actual AP piece. All omitted text is provided here and enclosed within pairs of triple asterisks like this:

***omitted text***:

***But otherwise, he believes, "I'm safe."***

"invasive meningococcal disease that sickened ***eight*** people in the LA area"

Among those who fell ill, half were gay or bisexual, ***including the three who died. Two of the victims were HIV-positive.***

***College campuses, high school locker rooms and prisons can be breeding grounds for the disease. In recent years, gay communities in New York, Chicago and Toronto have seen outbreaks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since 2010, New York has recorded 22 meningitis infections among gay men and seven deaths.

The latest cases in Los Angeles, which aren't considered an outbreak, come a year after a 33-year-old lawyer from West Hollywood was stricken with meningitis after attending a party in Palm Springs. He fell into a coma and died.***


***Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said people shouldn't be fearful of visiting the city. "It's not unexpected that where people socially congregate, there may be a small increase in communicable infections," he said.

The California Department of Public Health has received reports of 25 meningitis cases so far this year. Last year, there were 111 reported cases. Health officials don't yet know what strain is involved.***


***The AIDS Healthcare Foundation vaccinated nine people. Those who were immunized during last year's scare don't need another shot, said spokesman Ged Kenslea.***

***"If I was still going out and doing the club thing I might be more concerned," he [Frank Leigh] said.

He has never known anyone with meningitis, "but I know it's a serious thing. It's no joke. I hope guys will be careful out there. We don't want this thing blowing up."***


"***AP Science Writer Alicia Chang contributed to this report from Los Angeles.***

I see Anon's problem with this article and why he could not control his compulsion to change the text. An actual science writer wrote it so of course Anon had to leave so much of the relevant information in the article out of his lying cut and paste.

April 05, 2014 3:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Mark Twain once famously said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Twain wasn’t praising lies with this comment, of course, but modern-day conservatives seem to think he was dishing out advice instead of damning the practice of dishonesty. Conservatives have figured out a neat little rhetorical trick: One lie is easy for your opponents to debunk. Tell one lie after another, however, and your opponent’s debunkings will never catch up. By the time the liberal opposition has debunked one lie, there’s a dozen more to take its place.

Science educator Eugenie Scott deemed the technique the “Gish Gallop,” named for a notoriously sleazy creationist named Duane Gish. The Urban Dictionary defines the Gish Gallop as a technique that “involves spewing so much bullshit in such a short span on that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it.” Often users of the Gish Gallop know their arguments are nonsense or made in bad faith, but don’t particularly care because they are so dead set on advancing their agenda. Unfortunately, the strategy is so effective that it’s been expanding rapidly in right-wing circles. Here are just a few of the most disturbing examples of the Gish Gallop in action.

1. Creationism. It’s no surprise creationists inspired the coining of the term Gish Gallop, as they have perfected the art of making up nonsense faster than scientists can refute it. The list of false or irrelevant claims made by creationists, as chronicled by Talk Origins, numbers in the dozens, perhaps even hundreds, and more are always being spun out. Trying to argue with a creationist, therefore, turns into a hellish game of Whack-A-Mole. Debunk the lie that the speed of light is not constant, and you’ll find he’s already arguing that humans co-existed with dinosaurs. Argue that it’s unconstitutional to put the story of Adam and Eve in the science classroom, and find he’s pretending he was never asking for that and instead wants to “teach the controversy.”

“Teaching the controversy” is a classic Gish Gallop apology. The conservative wants to make it seem like he’s supporting open-minded debate, but instead he just wants an opportunity to dump a bunch of lies on students with the knowledge that they’ll never have the time and attention to carefully parse every debunking.

2. Climate change denialism.This strategy worked so well for creationism it makes perfect sense that it would be imported to the world of climate change denialism. Climate change denialists have many changing excuses for why they reject the science showing that human-caused greenhouse gases are changing the climate, but what all these reasons have in common is they are utter nonsense in service of a predetermined opposition to taking any action to prevent further damage.

Skeptical Science, a website devoted to debunking right-wing lies on this topic, has compiled a dizzying list of 176 common claims by climate denialists and links to why they are false. Some of these lies directly contradict each other. For instance, it can’t both be true that climate change is “natural” and that it’s not happening at all. No matter, since the point of these lies is not to create a real discussion about the issue, but to confuse the issue so much it’s impossible to get any real momentum behind efforts to stop global warming..."

April 05, 2014 4:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...4. Contraception mandate.The ACA-based requirement that insurance plans cover contraception without a copay has generated a Gish Gallop so large it deserves its own category. Jodi Jacobson of RH Reality Check chronicled 12 of the biggest lies generated by the right-wing noise machine in just the past couple of years since the mandate was even announced. It is not “free” birth control, nor is it “paid for” by employers. The birth control coverage is paid for by the employees, with benefits they earn by working. The mandate doesn’t cover “abortifacients,” only contraception. No, birth control doesn’t work by killing fertilized eggs, but by preventing fertilization. It’s simply false that the prescriptions in question can all be replaced with a $9-a-month prescription from Walmart, as many women’s prescriptions run into the hundreds and even thousands a year. No, it’s not true that the contraception mandate is about funding women’s “lifestyle”, because statistics show that having sex for fun instead of procreation is a universal human behavior and not a marginal or unusual behavior as the term “lifestyle” implies.

5. Gun safety. The gun lobby is dishonest to its core. Groups like the NRA like to paint themselves like they are human rights organizations, but in fact, they are an industry lobby whose only real goal is to protect the profit margins of gun manufacturers, regardless of the costs to human health and safety. Because their very existence is based on a lie, is it any surprise that gun industry advocates are experts at the Gish Gallop, ready to spring into action at the sign of any school shooting or report on gun violence and dump so many lies on the public that gun safety advocates can never even begin to address them all?

A small sampling of the many, many lies spouted by gun industry advocates: That guns prevent murder, when in fact more guns correlates strongly with more murders. That gun control doesn’t work. That gun control is unpopular. That any move to make gun ownership safer is a move to take away your guns. That a gun in the home makes you safer when it actually puts your family at more risk. That guns protect against domestic violence, when the truth is that owning a gun makes abuse worse, not better. Even the standard line “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is a distracting bit of dishonesty, since most gun deaths aren’t murders but suicides...."


h/t Salon

April 05, 2014 4:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Outrageous treatment? Not!
It was his own decision to resign as CEO"

look, the first liberal lie

he was given a choice of recanting his viewpoint on marriage or resigning

of course, the whole episode would only happen in Silicon Valley

most of America agrees that the viewpoint of 52% of California's electorate and Barack Obama at the time of Eich's contribution does not disqualify one from employment in our country

they made that clear by making Chik-Fil-A their favorite fast food place and watching Duck Dynasty

"It was also Tol's own decision to resign. Don't waste time worrying about him though."

lying by a liberal through misdirection

no one said, or implied, that Tol was forced to resign

the point is that a person with sufficient credentials to be chosen to write part of the report has disassociated himself from it because it omits relevant facts and errs on the side of alarmism

as most of the public now realizes

"The Koch brothers will probably pay him"

hey, look at that

another liberal lie

"just like they have been paying Siegfried Fred Singer at UVA to confuse the public with opinion pieces but to conduct no actual research and to not publish a shred of peer reviewed scientific research"

got news for you

the IPCC doesn't conduct research or publish research

it merely compiles the research results of others in a biased way

it's mission, btw, is to do just that

raise awareness of what they think is a foregone conclusion, regardless of the facts

"Lying Anon omitted from the actual AP piece. All omitted text is provided here and enclosed within pairs of triple asterisks like this"

so, you think anon omitted certain things to make the situation seem worse than it is?

why the does the first sentence anon posted clearly state that only eight deaths were involved?

but, let's say, theoretically, you're right

remember, that's exactly what Tol has accused the IPCC of

hyperbolizing the worse scenarios and omitting everything else

maybe anon was trying to show you that

that anon is really brilliant

April 07, 2014 6:16 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Uninsured Rate Falls To Lowest Since 2008: Gallup

"WASHINGTON (AP) — A major new survey finds that a growing percentage of Americans gained health insurance as the initial sign-up season for President Barack Obama's health care law drew to a close last month.

Released Monday, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index measured the share of adults without health insurance. That shrank from 17.1 percent at the end of last year to 15.6 percent for the first three months of 2014.

The decline of 1.5 percentage points would translate roughly to more than 3.5 million people gaining coverage. The trend accelerated as the March 31 enrollment deadline loomed.

"The Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as 'Obamacare,' appears to be accomplishing its goal of increasing the percentage of Americans with health insurance," said Gallup's analysis of the findings.

The survey is important because it combines the quick turnaround of media polls with extensive outreach usually seen in government research. Gallup interviewed more than 43,500 adults, or more than 40 times the number in a typical national media poll...."

April 07, 2014 9:01 AM  
Anonymous svelte_brunette said...

Anon claimed:

“It was his own decision to resign as CEO"

look, the first liberal lie

he was given a choice of recanting his viewpoint on marriage or resigning”


Do you have any evidence to back this up? Or are you just making this up?

Please feel free to share any actual facts you have uncovered.


Unacknowledged conservative blabberer claimed:

“Unwilling to acknowledge this as a significant question on which reasonable people of goodwill can disagree, some advocates of redefining marriage increasingly characterize those with whom they disagree as “enemies of the human race.” They’ve sent a clear message: If you stand up for marriage, we will demonize and marginalize you.”

“This kind of grotesque incivility is toxic for any democratic community. We can—we must—do better.”

I actually agree with the last sentence, we MUST do better. While this guy is whining about Eich deciding to resign, here are a couple of recent news bits from the world gay (or people who are perceived to be gay) have to live in:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/oregon-mom-found-guilty-murdering-4-year-old-son-thought-gay-article-1.1746234

“An Oregon mom was convicted on Wednesday of killing her 4-year-old son by beating him so badly that his intestines tore in two places.

It took Washington County jurors just over an hour to unanimously convict Jessica Dutro for the shocking death of little Zachary Dutro-Boggess, whom Dutro reportedly thought was gay.

Dutro was found guilty on all seven counts, Oregon Live reports: one count of murder, five counts of murder by abuse and one count of second-degree assault.

The 25-year-old mom remained stony-faced as the verdict was read in court. She will be sentenced on April 18.

During the trial, prosecutors revealed a Facebook message that Dutro sent to her 24-year-old boyfriend Brian Canady. The mom, using a slur, told Canady that she thought Zachary was going to be gay.

“He walks and talks like it. Ugh,” the mom wrote.

She then asked Canady to “work on” the boy “big time.”

Senior Deputy District Attorney Megan Johnson claimed that this was the motive behind Zachary’s unfair treatment.

On Aug. 12. 2012, Zachary collapsed at the homeless shelter where his family was living. Internal tears from a vicious beating had caused pre-fecal matter to leak from his bowels. Johnson said that the little boy would have been in extreme pain before his death—something any mom should have noticed.

April 07, 2014 10:57 AM  
Anonymous svelte_brunette said...

http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2014/02/11-yr-old-boy-bullied-for-being-a-brony-fighting-for-life-after-suicide-attempt-how-you-can-help/

“Eleven-year-old Michael Morones is a passionate boy. He idolizes his Uncle Jimmy, who is a proud member of the Bronies. The term Brony is a portmanteau that refers to fanboys of My Little Pony (“bro ponies”), although girls can be Bronies too.

Michael’s favorite character is Pinkie Pie, a hyper excitable pony. The little boy, who has ADHD and rarely sits still for a minute, feels a connection to bouncy Pinkie Pie. His Uncle Jimmy taught him to be proud of his interests, and the boy has frequently worn Brony dogtags and Brony bracelets to school.

A group of his peers at school have been taunting and bullying the boy about his fandom. His stepfather, Shannon Suttle, said, “Michael was upset because the kids were calling him gay for liking a girls’ TV show. His mom and I, well, we told him that it didn’t matter what other people think. It only matters what he thinks.”

Nobody stood up for Michael, but he seemed to be doing okay…”

“…A few weeks ago, Michael told us he wanted to take the bus straight home after school, instead of going to the boys and girls club with the other kids,” Suttle explained, “and at the time, we thought it was because he wanted a chance to have the TV to himself for a couple hours before his brothers came home.“ Michael has a 13-year-old brother and a 5-year-old brother. The family only has one TV, so the boys tend to argue over what they watch.

“But now,” Suttle said quietly, “I wonder about why he wanted to come home instead of being with the other kids. He said to us that the other kids were telling him he was gay for loving Pinkie Pie and they were trying to make him feel ashamed for being gay. We said that we didn’t care if he was gay or straight; he was our son and we would love him.”

On Thursday, January 23, Michael had another rough day at school. That night, he attempted suicide by hanging himself.

Michael is in the pediatric intensive care unit in a North Carolina hospital. He has damage to his brain, his heart, and his lungs and has not yet fully awakened. There is healing potential, but the extent of that potential is unknown. His family is holding vigil, praying that the swelling in his brain will go down and the child will become coherent. A tracheotomy is scheduled for this week.”

I have not a single iota of concern for Brendan Eich. I’m sure Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A, or the Family Research Council can but someone with his skills, attitude, and wealth to use.

Until little boys stop dying because someone thinks they’re a faggot and need to be “taught a lesson,” don’t bother whining to me about wanting more “tolerance.”

Have a nice day,

Cynthia

April 07, 2014 10:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey Cinco

Do you have any evidence to back up the idea that support for marriage is connected with the abuse of children who act gay? Or are you just making this up?

Please feel free to share any actual facts you have uncovered.

btw, most people who support gay "marriage" also feel this mother would have had a right to kill thus child before he was born, for any reason at all

I suppose you won't feel sorry for anyone as long millions of children are killed by their mothers in the womb, or when half-delivered, every year, right?

as for the kid who likes toy ponies

unfortunately, kids always pick on weak kids who don't fit the norm, regardless if the abnormality is perceived homosexuality

I'd like to see that change but the best way would be to raise kids in a religious environment with moral instruction

April 07, 2014 12:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

very ominous

the country could be in a lot of trouble if freedom of speech is now to be subjugated to the gay agenda

let's hope this doesn't mean the Court is leaning that way

"Attorneys for New Mexico photographer Elaine Huguenin found out today that the U.S. Supreme Court will not take their important religious-freedom case involving photographing same-sex commitment ceremonies.

The high court’s refusal to hear the case does not mean it affirms the New Mexico Supreme Court ruling that said Huguenin must use her creative talents to record a same-sex commitment ceremony as “the price of citizenship” in the United States.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys who represent Elaine and Jonathan Huguenin point out that the U.S. Supreme Court can deny a case for a variety of reasons and may merely be waiting for other similar cases to move through the lower courts.

“The First Amendment protects our freedom to speak or not speak on any issue without fear of punishment,” said ADF senior counsel Jordan Lorence. “We had hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would use this case to affirm this basic constitutional principle; however, the court will likely have several more opportunities to do just that in other cases of ours that are working their way through the court system.”

The case started in 2006 when Vanessa Willock emailed Elaine Huguenin and asked her to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. Huguenin politely declined and Willock and her partner found another photographer at a lower price. Still, they filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission.

In 2008 the commission ruled against the Huguenins and ordered them to pay attorney’s fees of more than $6,000. The case made its way to the New Mexico Supreme Court where justices ruled against the Huguenins, opening the way for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Conservative author and blogger Todd Starnes said in an article posted today he believes the high court’s inaction will put other Christians at risk.

“The idea that gay rights take precedence over everyone else’s rights,” he wrote, “was recently manifested in the forced resignation of Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, who came under fire from the gay rights community after it was revealed he had donated money to California’s Prop 8 initiative.”

“I believe militant gay rights groups will start targeting churches that own fellowship halls. I believe they will start targeting pastors who preach against homosexuality. And I believe they will go after individuals who attend those kinds of churches.”

U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes of Virginia also issued a statement.

“By refusing to take this case,” he said, “the Court is refusing to protect some of our most fundamental First Amendment freedoms — freedoms that our ancestors fought and died to obtain. The ability to freely speak and live according to our beliefs is the prize, not the price, of citizenship, and we all have a stake in protecting it.”

Lorence said the Huguenins will consider all their options.

“Elaine and numerous others like her around the country have been more than willing to serve any and all customers,” he said, “but they are not willing to promote any and all messages. A government that forces any American to create a message contrary to her own convictions is a government every American should fear.”"

April 08, 2014 9:13 AM  
Anonymous svelte_brunette said...

“Do you have any evidence to back up the idea that support for marriage is connected with the abuse of children who act gay? Or are you just making this up?”

You forget Anon, I went to Catholic schools for 7 of my 12 years of pre-college education. I have a lifetime of experience dealing with anti-gay harassment from Christians. Or are you trying to tell me all those bible waving screamers yelling at my from the side-lines at Pride events are actually PRO gay marriage?

My favorite line comes from my brother, who was speaking to a lesbian at the time (keep in mind he had recently come back from the First Gulf War, and he is an army veteran): “My bible says I should kill people like you, and the blood will be on your head. The fact that you’re still alive is PROOF of my tolerance.”

“btw, most people who support gay "marriage" also feel this mother would have had a right to kill thus child before he was born, for any reason at all”

So you’ve actually found some poll results on this? I’d like to see them. Or is this another easy attempt at liberal bashing? It’s like you think conservatives never get abortions or something. Just like they never get divorces and never commit adultery. Wake up and smell the anti-septic wipe Anon.

“I suppose you won't feel sorry for anyone as long millions of children are killed by their mothers in the womb, or when half-delivered, every year, right?”

I’ve stated my position here on abortion on several occasions. Please try to pay more attention so I don’t have to repeat myself. I do NOT condone abortion. I think it is a terrible tragedy. However conservative groups are helping NO ONE with their anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage tactics. There are plenty gay couples (some of them FINALLY married) who would love to adopt a child or two. There are about a million fetuses aborted every year by irresponsible heterosexuals (assuming the number that are aborted for medical reasons is relatively small). There is no reason all these gay couple should go wanting, and all these fetuses should be murdered. Get these folks together more often. It can work out beautifully. I think there was a story about it in the Huffington Post the other day, but I don’t have time to find the link.

“unfortunately, kids always pick on weak kids who don't fit the norm, regardless if the abnormality is perceived homosexuality

I'd like to see that change but the best way would be to raise kids in a religious environment with moral instruction”

As I said before, I WENT to Catholic schools. Religious instruction is NOT the answer.
At Catholic schools you are taught to conform in all attire, behavior, and hair styles. Differences in dress or behavior are met with swift reprimands including corporal punishment. This instills fear in children and teaches them that it is perfectly acceptable to physically punish people that are different – in fact it is necessary. The kids behave very well during school hours, on school grounds, but after school it’s an entirely different matter.

Diversity training is the answer. Northern Ireland learned that the hard way. Their diversity training programs implemented in schools have even made it on to television shows here. You can find some of there materials here:

http://www.credni.org/contents/what-is-cred/

Have a nice day,

Cynthia


April 08, 2014 9:29 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Outstanding jobs good anonymous and Cynthia!

I'm really impressed with good anonymous's last several posts in particular, that's an impressive debunking of the lies about global warming and Obamacare. The link debunking 176 global warming myths was exceptionally good and will come in very handy down the road.

April 08, 2014 2:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

don't have much time this week, Cinco, but a couple of things:

1. my apologies if I implied you were pro-choice and you aren't

2. I probably shouldn't have referred to blanket "religious instruction"; obviously, not all religions are equal, as adherents of any of them would agree

have a horrible day

April 08, 2014 3:41 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt, all the time in the world won't be enough for you to justify the anti-reality positions you've taken.

April 08, 2014 4:12 PM  
Anonymous Another lying liar said...

James O'Keefe slapped upside the head by Texas court

Darling pimp impersonator and right wing dumbass extraordinaire James O'Keefe has had his latest sad little balloon popped by a Texas judge. Last February, O'Keefe and his dubious Spy v. Spy club Project Veritas uploaded a video to YouTube claiming that they had caught Battleground Texas, a progressive organization working to turn Texas blue, flouting Texas law and must be shunned and set afloat on the same iceberg occupied by ACORN.

O'Keefe and his merry band of pimply provocateurs claimed that Battleground Texas was illegally obtaining telephone numbers from voter registration applications and handing them over to the Wendy Davis campaign.

In February, O'Keefe and his Project Veritas group released a video investigation of progressive organization Battleground Texas. In the video, O'Keefe accuses the group, which he labels "the new ACORN," of using "potentially illegal methods to change elections." The allegation hinged on O'Keefe repeatedly pointing to a part of the Texas Election Code, which states that "the registrar may not transcribe, copy, or otherwise record a telephone number furnished on a registration application."

The slow-witted Republicans who still depend on O'Keefe to do their dirtiest of dirty work in their voter suppression efforts, hit the roof and demanded a thorough investigation of Battleground Texas. The melodramatic histrionics tell even the casual observer that Texas Republicans are worried about the real possibility of Texas turning a lovely shade of blue.

The fauxrage led to complaints being filed with the Texas secretary of state. A Texas judge appointed two special prosecutors, one of which is a Texas Republican, to investigate the matter. After thoroughly reviewing O'Keefe's "evidence" against Battleground Texas, they found him to be completely full of shit and filed a report requesting the judge to dismiss the complaint due to "insufficient evidence and failure to state an offense." The judge seemed more than happy to grant the request while deliciously spanking O'Keefe in the process. In his order to dismiss, the judge took direct aim at O'Keefe, calling him out for his tired schtick and letting him know his 15 minutes of fame are pretty much over.

Conclusions
a. The Veritas video was little more than a canard and political disinformation. The video was particularly unprofessional when it suggested that the actions of Battleground Texas were advocated by a Texas gubernatorial candidate and that the actions of a single volunteer deputy registrar may even involve private health data, which is not involved in the voter registration process.


In a sane political world one could safely conclude that after this latest pie in the face, James O'Keefe will have come to the end of his Wikipedia page. The thing is, we aren't dealing with a sane political party. You can safely lay wager that once O'Keefe wipes the meringue of his smug little mug, he'll be dressing up in a new undercover costume to drum up outrage for a story without a lick of truth to it and the Republican party will hail him a genius hero once again. Boy howdy, are these people slow learners.

April 09, 2014 7:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Democrat hypocrisy will be found out soon if Harry Reid doesn't shut up.

I’m talking about Democrats’ unending war on the billionaires who fund right-of-center causes. Over the past month, Democrats have spent millions trying to link Republicans to these ostensibly evil oligarchs who are buying elections and rigging the system against the middle class.

Right. But then what are the left’s billionaires doing?

The hypocrisy starts with the Senate Majority PAC. The group is currently running television ads defending vulnerable Senate Democrats or potential candidates in Louisiana, Arkansas, Colorado, Michigan and North Carolina. The ads link the Republican candidate to “billionaires” -- especially the horrible “out of state” variety.

Who are the Senate Majority PAC’s biggest donors? They include out-of-state billionaires like Hollywood bigwig Steven Spielberg, music mogul David Geffen and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Democrats, it seems, divide their time between attacking the 1 percent and taking checks from them.

April 09, 2014 1:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The list starts with Alaska’s Sen. Begich, whose campaign ads declare, “We are not going to let a bunch of out of state billionaires … attack him.” Over the years, NY billionaire George Soros has chipped in to his campaign, as have California billionaires Spielberg and Geffen.

North Carolina Sen. Hagan feels the same way. She has railed against deep-pocketed outsiders and claimed that her constituents wouldn’t “be fooled by this outside money.” Actually, Hagan is the one trying to fool her state’s voters: Billionaires from both coasts help pay her bills, including Soros, California’s Haim Saban and New York’s Leonard Lauder.

Ditto for Louisiana Sen. Landrieu. She casts aspersions at the usual suspects despite taking money from 1-percenters like Soros, New York’s Dirk Ziff and Illinois’ Neil Bluhm.

Next up is Colorado Sen. Udall. Despite telling his constituents that “outside money won’t measure up against our grass-roots support,” no fewer than eight non-Colorado billionaires helped fill his campaign coffers. Nebraska’s Warren Buffett, New York’s Soros and Lauder, Illinois’ Bluhm, and California’s John Doerr, Irwin Jacobs, Spielberg and Geffen -- his donor list is a who’s who of out-of-state billionaires.

These aren’t the only examples. Whether it’s Sen. Pryor in Arkansas, Rep. Braley in Iowa or Rep. Peters in Michigan, every Democratic candidate in an endangered Senate seat or trying to win one is on some out-of-state billionaire’s dole.

When direct donations and PACs aren’t enough, Democrats can turn to their own dark-money fundraising group, Democracy Alliance. The group has spent some $500 million to prop up left-wing organizations since its inception in 2005. It planned to spend $50 million in 2013 alone.

Its members -- and the organizations benefiting from their largesse, like the Center for American Progress and Media Matters -- routinely demand that outside money depart politics forthwith. Chris Hughes, who made his money at Facebook, started a nonprofit called Protect our Democracy to stop the “unprecedented wave of special interest money” in elections. Similarly, George Soros’s son Jonathan founded and funds Friends of Democracy, a super PAC that claims to support limiting the influence of big money in politics.

Such is the billionaire-backed, billionaire-bashing campaign apparatus lined up to defend Democrats’ Senate majority this year. Thankfully, they’re doing nothing wrong. Like their counterparts on the right, their actions are legal. Insofar as they’re exercising their First Amendment rights, their actions are even laudable.

But that’s only true if you’re on the left. You won’t hear Harry Reid rail against these billionaires on the Senate floor and call them “un-American.” You won’t see the DSCC admit that it’s “addicted” to these donors -- a charge Democrats level at the right -- nor will you witness vulnerable senators asking the IRS to investigate the groups that their billionaire benefactors support.

This double standard is glaringly obvious -- and come Election Day, you may see a Senate with fewer hypocrites.

April 09, 2014 1:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just days after being named CEO of Mozilla, Brendan Eich was forced out because he is an opponent of same-sex marriage. After declining opportunities to recant his views, he “voluntarily” decided to step down.

Political differences with CEOs, even deep political differences, are something adults handle all the time. Most of us know that what happened held much more significance than anodyne market forces having their way. And Eich shouldn’t be protected on the grounds that one has the right to be wrong. See, Eich wasn’t hounded out of corporate life because he was wrong. He was hounded out of corporate life because he was right. His message strikes at the root of a popular but deeply flawed ideology that can not tolerate dissent.

And what we have in Eich is the powerful story of a dissident — one that forces those of us who are still capable of it to pause and think deeply on changing marriage laws and a free society.

It’s about crushing the belief that the sexes are distinct in deep and meaningful ways that contribute to human flourishing.

We’ve had years of criminally one-sided media coverage, cowardly political leaders and elite cultural views that have conveyed to you that the only reason anyone might think sexual complementarity is key to marriage is bigotry. You may have even internalized this message. You may need to hold on to this belief for reasons of tribalism or pride. But let’s go on an open-minded journey where we seek to understand the views of others without characterizing them as Hitler-like. It’s difficult in these times, but we can do it.

April 09, 2014 1:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So what is the difference between marriage and other relationships?

OK. We probably already understand relationships have value, right? Assuming we’re not sociopaths, we do. So what is the difference between marriage and other relationships? There’s no question marriage has been treated dramatically differently than other relationships by governments and society. Why? Is it that it features a more vibrant or emotional connection? Or is there some feature that is a difference in kind – that marks it out as something that ought to be socially structured? We usually don’t want government in our other relationships, right? So why is marriage singled out throughout all time and human history as a different type of recognized relationship?

Well, what singled it out was that sex was involved. Sex. And why does that matter? Well, there’s precisely one bodily system for which each of us only has half of the system. It’s the one that involves sex between one man and one woman. It’s with respect to that system that the unit is the mated pair. In that system, it’s not just a relationship that is the union of minds, wills or important friendships. It’s the literal union of bodies. In sexual congress, in intercourse between a man and a woman, you are literally coordinated to a single bodily end.

There’s one bodily system for which each of us only has half of the system.

In every other respect we as humans act as individual organisms except when it comes to intercourse between men and women — then we work together as one flesh. Coordination toward that end — even when procreation is not achieved — makes the unity here. This is what marriage law was about. Not two friends building a house together. Or two people doing other sexual activities together. It was about the sexual union of men and women and a refusal to lie about what that union and that union alone produces: the propagation of humanity. This is the only way to make sense of marriage laws throughout all time and human history. Believing in this truth is not something that is wrong, and should be a firing offense. It’s not something that’s wrong, but should be protected speech. It’s actually something that’s right. It’s right regardless of how many people say otherwise. If you doubt the truth of this reality, consider your own existence, which we know is due to one man and one woman getting together. Consider the significance of what this means for all of humanity, that we all share this.

April 09, 2014 1:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now if one wants to change marriage laws to reflect something else, that’s obviously something that one can aim to do. We’ve seen the rapid, frequently unthinking embrace of that change in recent years, described one year ago in the humanist and libertarian magazine Spiked as “a case study in conformism” that should terrify “anyone who values diversity of thought and tolerance of dissent.”

Are we sure we need to accept that lie? Are we sure we want to?

Perhaps there should have been a bit of a burden of proof on those who wanted to change the institution — something beyond crying “Bigot!” in a crowded theater. Perhaps advocates of the change should have explained at some point, I don’t know, what singles out marriage as unique from other relationships under this new definition. What is marriage? That’s a good question to answer, particularly if you want to radically alter the one limiting factor that is present throughout all history. Once we get an answer for what this new marriage definition is, perhaps our media and other elites could spend some time thinking about the consequences of that change. Does it in any way affect the right of children to be raised by their own mother and father? Have we forgotten why that’s an important norm? Either way, does it change the likelihood that children will be raised by their own mother and father? Does it by definition make that an impossibility for whatever children are raised by same-sex couples? Do we no longer believe that children should be raised by their own mother and father? Did we forget to think about children in this debate, pretending that it’s only about adults? In any case, is this something that doesn’t matter if males and females are interchangeable? Is it really true that there are no significant differences between mothers and fathers? Really? Are we sure we need to accept that lie? Are we sure we want to?

April 09, 2014 1:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Efforts to raise public concern about climate change by linking it to natural disasters will backfire. More than a decade’s worth of research suggests that fear-based appeals about climate change inspire denial, fatalism and polarization.

For instance, Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” popularized the idea that today’s natural disasters are increasing in severity and frequency because of human-caused global warming. It also contributed to public backlash and division. Since the, the number of Americans telling Gallup that the media was exaggerating global warming grew to 42 percent today from about 34 percent.

Climate advocates argue that they have an obligation to convey the alarming facts.

But claims linking the latest blizzard, drought or hurricane to global warming simply can’t be supported by the science. Our warming world is, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, increasing heat waves and intense precipitation in some places, and is likely to bring more extreme weather in the future. But the panel also said there is little evidence that this warming is increasing the loss of life or the economic costs of natural disasters. “Economic growth, including greater concentrations of people and wealth in periled areas and rising insurance penetration,” the climate panel noted, “is the most important driver of increasing losses.”

April 09, 2014 1:34 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Of course bad anonymous/Wyatt is repeating the same tired old right wing lies about what the IPCC said in its latest report. Here's what the IPCC really says about economic impacts:
"By significantly raising the projected rates and amounts of sea level rise through 2100, the IPCC is sounding alarms for coastal cities worldwide, many of which are already being forced to adapt to increased flooding. The devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy in New York in 2012 drove home the lethal combination of long-term sea level rise and extreme weather events, and the IPCC’s projections show that urban planners have a major challenge.

For example, a recent study on coastal flooding of the world’s largest coastal cities found that Hong Kong has $60.7 billion sitting at or below the 100-year flood level. That study found that if no actions are taken to boost Hong Kong's flood defenses, coastal flooding could put $140 billion in infrastructure at-risk if sea levels rise by 15.8 inches.

"Changes are occurring rapidly and they are sort of building up that risk," Field said. These risks are both big and small, according to the report. They are now and in the future. They hit farmers and big cities. Some places will have too much water, some not enough, including drinking water. Other risks mentioned in the report involve the price and availability of food, and to a lesser and more qualified extent some diseases, financial costs and even world peace.

"Things are worse than we had predicted" in 2007, when the group of scientists last issued this type of report, said report co-author Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University in Bangladesh. "We are going to see more and more impacts, faster and sooner than we had anticipated."

The problems have gotten so bad that the panel had to add a new and dangerous level of risks. In 2007, the biggest risk level in one key summary graphic was "high" and colored blazing red. The latest report adds a new level, "very high," and colors it deep purple.
Climate change will worsen problems that society already has, such as poverty, sickness, violence and refugees, according to the report. And on the other end, it will act as a brake slowing down the benefits of a modernizing society, such as regular economic growth and more efficient crop production, it says.

April 09, 2014 4:27 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

"In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans," the report says. And if society doesn't change, the future looks even worse, it says: "Increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts."

While the problems from global warming will hit everyone in some way, the magnitude of the harm won't be equal, coming down harder on people who can least afford it, the report says. It will increase the gaps between the rich and poor, healthy and sick, young and old, and men and women, van Aalst said.

The IPCC report actually echoes an earlier U.N. climate science panel that said if greenhouse gases continue to rise, the world is looking at another about 6 or 7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.5 or 4 degrees Celsius) of warming by 2100. The IPCC Summary does additionally warn that warming higher than 2°C might shove the climate system over tipping points that would produce substantially larger losses to GDP. The IPCC says the economic models on which the 2% of GDP number depends do not "account for catastrophic changes, tipping points and many other factors."

The IPCC report while describing the 0.2 to 2 percent figure as "incomplete," it concludes that GDP losses "are more likely than not to be greater," rather than smaller, than this range. The U.N. panel also says there are large differences between and within countries — some will be affected much more significantly than others.

April 09, 2014 4:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

House Republicans on Wednesday accused former IRS official Lois Lerner of breaking agency rules by aggressively urging denial of tax-exempt status to Crossroads GPS, the giant political nonprofit founded by Karl Rove.

The House Ways and Means Committee released emails showing the former chief of the tax-exempt unit took a special interest in Crossroads GPS in early 2013 — inquiring with IRS officials why they hadn’t been audited. Around the same time an email suggested she might be applying for a job with a pro-President Barack Obama group, Organizing For Action.

The House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday voted to refer former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution for alleged actions relating to the IRS’s targeting controversy.

The 23-14 vote took place behind closed doors so that lawmakers could discuss protected taxpayer information that only members of certain congressional panels can access.

Members of the committee claim to have evidence that Lerner helped direct IRS targeting against conservative groups, misled investigators and exposed confidential taxpayer information.

Lerner’s attorney, William Taylor noted that the Justice Department is already investigating the IRS targeting matter.

“Ms. Lerner has done nothing wrong,” Taylor said. “She did not violate any law or regulation. She did not ‎mislead Congress. She did not interfere with the rights of any organization to a tax exemption.”‎

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans to vote Thursday on a resolution to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the panel about the targeting issue.

April 09, 2014 7:28 PM  
Anonymous Nixon's aides went to jail and he resigned said...

Internal Revenue Service employees encouraged taxpayers to vote for President Obama during his 2012 reelection campaign and disparaged Republicans, a federal ethics watchdog said Wednesday.

One IRS customer representative urged people calling into the agency to vote for Obama by “repeatedly reciting a chant based on the spelling of his last name,” the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said in its announcement.

The office is responsible for investigating cases in which people violate the Hatch Act, which bans federal employees from engaging in partisan campaign activities.

A Kentucky-based tax advisory specialist was also found promoting her allegiance to the Democratic Party in an official phone call with a taxpayer during the 2012 election cycle. “Republicans already trying to cap my pension and...they’re going to take women back 40 years,” she told a female taxpayer in one phone call.

The IRS worker said her mother always told her, “If you vote for a Republican, the rich are going to get richer and the poor are going to get poorer.”

“I’m not supposed to voice my opinion, so you didn’t hear me saying that,” she said during the phone call.

IRS employees based at a Dallas, Texas center wore pro-Obama political stickers, buttons and clothing to work, OSC said. They also used pro-Obama screensavers on their computers.

OSC later cautioned the employees not to “wear or display any items advocating for or against a political party, partisan political group, or partisan candidate in the workplace.”

This news comes the same day the House Ways and Means Committee voted to refer former IRS official Lois Lerner to the Justice Department. She resigned last September because of her connection to the IRS’s targeting of advocacy groups during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.

On Thursday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to vote on a contempt resolution due to Lerner’s decision not to testify before the panel.

April 10, 2014 8:14 AM  
Anonymous global cooling, totalitarian gay tech, politically suppressive IRS, Obamacare lies, it's fact galore said...

With the announcement that 7.1 million Americans signed up for ObamaCare, Dems think they are over the hump. Nancy Pelosi told CNN's says, "We're very proud of what we have accomplished."

Democrats at risk agree. Louisiana's Sen. Landrieu says ObamaCare "holds great promise and is getting stronger every day." Alaska's Sen. Begich proclaims "seven million people have access to quality, affordable care and are in control of their own health-care choices."

President Obama declared, "The debate over repealing this law is over."

That's a wish, not a fact.

ObamaCare is and will remain a political problem for Dems because there's a huge disconnect between the party's rhetoric and the reality that people have experienced.

Take the 7.1 million people. The administration is aware that 20% of them have yet to pay.

Even if the administration gets seven million paying customers, they can't assume they are all happy patrons who will vote Democratic in gratitude. Most are people whose health coverage was canceled last fall despite Mr. Obama's frequent promise that "if you like your plan, you can keep it."

A Dec. 27 Associated Press survey found 4.7 million policies were canceled last year as out-of-compliance with ObamaCare's mandates. As of March 6, the number of cancellations had grown to 6.3 million. That figure did not include policies canceled in 11 states—Arizona, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Wisconsin—which represent 24% of the nation's population. If policies were voided in those states (which did not collect the data) at the same rate, the total of canceled policies could be around 9.3 million.

Most of those policyholders were happy with what they had and didn't like being forced to change. Most of those policies probably covered more than one person, making the number of people adversely affected much higher than the 7.1 million number.

That's not the only flaw in the Democrats' reasoning. Though some policyholders are getting cheaper, subsidized coverage, many newly enrolled exchange customers are likely to be paying higher premiums and deductibles, even after accounting for ObamaCare's subsidies.

In his State of the Union address, the president claimed that "because of the Affordable Care Act, more than three million Americans under age 26 have gained coverage under their parents' plans." The reference was to a provision in the law that allowed young people between the ages of 25 and 26 to stay on their parents' plan for an additional year, starting in 2010.

However, as the Manhattan Institute's senior fellow Avik Roy has pointed out, this provision had not led to an increase in the percentage of young people with coverage. According to a September Census Bureau report, "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States," the percentage of young people with private health insurance was the same after two years of ObamaCare—60.5%—as it was before the law kicked in.

There is not likely any army of grateful 25-year-olds and their parents ready to vote for Team Obama this fall.

The administration seems to inhabit a parallel universe in which their health law is a glorious success that will carry Democrats to victory in the midterm elections. In November, the real world will deliver a harsh message about ObamaCare. The debate over this unpopular legislation is far from over.

April 10, 2014 10:39 AM  
Anonymous Another Obamacare success said...

9th Street Ministries to conclude Medical Clinic mission

It was announced last week that 9th Street Ministries will be concluding their medical clinic mission, which had been ongoing monthly to offer free medical services to those in need since first starting in 1998. The final day for the medical clinic will be Thursday, April 24, and that will conclude the mission that has been in place for almost 16 years.

“Because people are qualifying for insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, our free medical clinic will not be needed anymore,” Stacey Bowser RN, 9th Street Ministries Clinic Director, stated. “We’ve gone from seeing around 300 people a month on a regular basis, but as people were enrolling in Obamacare, the numbers we were seeing have dropped. We were down to 80 people that came through the medical clinic in February, all the way down to three people at the medical clinic in March. Our services won’t be needed anymore, and this will conclude our mission.”

The free medical clinic at 9th Street Ministries was started to reach out to those who could not qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, and did not have any other health insurance policy. If anyone has any form of health insurance, they then become ineligible to received the free medical clinic care through 9th Street Ministries.

“Once people are enrolled in Obamacare, we can’t see them anymore,” Bowser said. “This complete dropoff of numbers of people coming to the clinic is a result of all those who have successfully enrolled in an insurance policy now.”

The last day will officially be Thursday, April 24, and it will only be open until noon.

“There was such a need for many years that we would have people coming through the medical clinic from the time the doors opened early in the morning all the way until 4:00 in the afternoon.”

9th Street Ministries had always been open on the last Thursday of each month, and was providing services on a first come first serve basis.

The closure of the medical clinic will have no affect on the other services offered by 9th Street Ministries. The services of the Feeding Mission and the Polk County Family Mission will carry on as. The Polk County Family Mission is a program for helping families with bill and utility assistance.

The medical clinic was seeing so many area residents, that there was always a crew of 25 to 30 volunteers that worked to meet all the needs of keeping the medical center operating successfully. After the end of this month, there won’t be the need for that particular group of volunteers anymore.

While 9th Street Ministries has always been sponsored by First Baptist Church in Mena, many other churches and groups were part of its mission. Volunteers have always come from throughout the county to help meet the needs of the people.

“We’ve done our mission, and it’s been great,” Bowser said. “For me, in addition to helping countless people over the years, the biggest honor has been to work with such a devoted group of volunteers that sought out to meet the the needs of Polk County. It’s been an extreme blessing,” Bowser said.

April 11, 2014 8:01 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Obamacare mandates unlimited free contraceptives but if you want anti-biotics for your child, there's a co-pay

if you have a problem with that, you're in a war with women

April 11, 2014 9:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

if you want anti-biotics for your child, there's a co-pay

Yes, prescription drugs for sickness are curative care, not preventive care.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Non-ACA compliant plans do not cover "anti-biotics for your child" without a co-pay either, unless the monthly premium is very high. Nor is "preventative care" provided free of charge on most affordable non-ACA compliant plans.

You obviously did not look into ACA-compliant plans because if you did, you would know co-pays depend on the level of coverage you choose. Generally, the higher the monthly premium, the lower the deductible and out of pocket expenses.

Once deductibles and out of pocket expense are met, ACA-compliant insurance plans must cover 100% for covered essential health benefits, which include prescription drugs.

April 11, 2014 12:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Obamacare mandates unlimited free contraceptives"

What do you mean "unlimited?" You don't think the pill works like Rush Limbaugh does, one pill for every encounter, do you?? Rush mixed up his little blue viagra pills with birth control pills.

The ONLY bit of covered preventive care you GOPers ever want to mention is contraception but the ACA covers a lot more than just that.

Preventive health services for adults

"All Marketplace plans and many other plans must cover the following list of preventive services without charging you a copayment or coinsurance. This is true even if you haven’t met your yearly deductible. This applies only when these services are delivered by a network provider.

1. Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm one-time screening for men of specified ages who have ever smoked
2. Alcohol Misuse screening and counseling
3. Aspirin use to prevent cardiovascular disease for men and women of certain ages
4. Blood Pressure screening for all adults
5. Cholesterol screening for adults of certain ages or at higher risk
6. Colorectal Cancer screening for adults over 50
7. Depression screening for adults
8. Diabetes (Type 2) screening for adults with high blood pressure
9. Diet counseling for adults at higher risk for chronic disease
10. HIV screening for everyone ages 15 to 65, and other ages at increased risk
11. Immunization vaccines for adults--doses, recommended ages, and recommended populations vary:

Hepatitis A
Hepatitis B
Herpes Zoster
Human Papillomavirus
Influenza (Flu Shot)
Measles, Mumps, Rubella
Meningococcal
Pneumococcal
Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis
Varicella
12. Obesity screening and counseling for all adults [AHEM, RUSH]
13. Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) prevention counseling for adults at higher risk
14. Syphilis screening for all adults at higher risk
15. Tobacco Use screening for all adults and cessation interventions for tobacco users"

April 11, 2014 12:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And Preventive health services for children

"Most health plans must cover a set of preventive health services for children at no cost when delivered by an in-network provider. This includes Marketplace and Medicaid coverage.

Coverage for children’s preventive health services

All Marketplace health plans and many other plans must cover the following list of preventive services for children without charging you a copayment or coinsurance. This is true even if you haven’t met your yearly deductible.

1. Autism screening for children at 18 and 24 months
2. Behavioral assessments for children at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
3. Blood Pressure screening for children at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years , 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
4. Cervical Dysplasia screening for sexually active females
5. Depression screening for adolescents
6. Developmental screening for children under age 3
7. Dyslipidemia screening for children at higher risk of lipid disorders at the following ages: 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
8. Fluoride Chemoprevention supplements for children without fluoride in their water source
9. Gonorrhea preventive medication for the eyes of all newborns
10. Hearing screening for all newborns
11. Height, Weight and Body Mass Index measurements for children at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
12. Hematocrit or Hemoglobin screening for children
13. Hemoglobinopathies or sickle cell screening for newborns
14. HIV screening for adolescents at higher risk
15. **Hypothyroidism screening for newborns
16. Immunization vaccines for children from birth to age 18 —doses, recommended ages, and recommended populations vary:

Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis
Haemophilus influenzae type b
Hepatitis A
Hepatitis B
Human Papillomavirus
Inactivated Poliovirus
Influenza (Flu Shot)
Measles, Mumps, Rubella
Meningococcal
Pneumococcal
Rotavirus
Varicella

17. Iron supplements for children ages 6 to 12 months at risk for anemia
18. Lead screening for children at risk of exposure
19. Medical History for all children throughout development at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years , 5 to 10 years , 11 to 14 years , 15 to 17 years.
20. Obesity screening and counseling
21. Oral Health risk assessment for young children Ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years.
22. Phenylketonuria (PKU) screening for this genetic disorder in newborns
23. Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) prevention counseling and screening for adolescents at higher risk
24. Tuberculin testing for children at higher risk of tuberculosis at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
25. Vision screening for all children."

April 11, 2014 12:49 PM  
Anonymous lerner is gulity, guilty, guilty said...

"Yes, prescription drugs for sickness are curative care, not preventive care.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

wow, I thought liberals tried to be a little more cagey than this

pregnancy is not a disease to be prevented or cured

it is life

"curing" it is called death

not that I'm opposed to birth control but it is the result of voluntary behavior

birth control is not a health issue

the reason pills are not subject to co-pays is because they are so cheap, they wouldn't otherwise be covered and liberals would miss out on the opportunity to weigh in on an issue which shouldn't concern government

meanwhile, curing an kid's strep throat is given lower priority

April 11, 2014 2:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Unwanted pregnancies are best prevented.

Keep forgetting to mention the other 29 preventive measures covered by the ACA and claim it's only cheap birth control pills that are covered.

It's good to remind our readers how ignorant you are.

Ask Theresa how much her uncovered (by her non-ACA health plan) mammogram will cost her this year.

April 11, 2014 3:00 PM  
Anonymous Wasn't this Theresa who said...

"can smell a phony said...

ok, I realize I left out one imnportant piece of info. on my premium increase. Yes, it went up 3,000, but, that was for two people. So, mine alone, would be 1,500 increase. Still, household increase was 3,000 and that is terrible. Same plan as last year, still 1,500 deductible for each person, but, this year, no coverage for preventive care such as physicals, colonoscopies, mammograms. It was still better to take this same plan since the Obamacare premium was higher and didn't offset the loss of preventive care. I lose. Unemployed and illegal aliens all win. There are no guarantees that the people signing up for Obamacare won't pay higher next year anyway. The trick was to get everyone sucked in to sign up. Or, pay a fine. Barrack Hitler Obama. Yet, people would vote for him again if they could.

March 30, 2014 12:32 PM"

April 11, 2014 3:04 PM  
Anonymous lerner is guilty, guilty, guilty said...

"Keep forgetting to mention the other 29 preventive measures covered by the ACA and claim it's only cheap birth control pills that are covered"

again, pregnancy isn't a disease, which is what preventative measures in a health plan are to prevent

"It's good to remind our readers how ignorant you are"

well, they're seeing some ignorance alright, but it's not mine

"Ask Theresa how much her uncovered (by her non-ACA health plan) mammogram will cost her this year."

don't know what you're talking about and don't care

but it's encouraging to see you trying to deflect attention from the issue I brought up

it validates my point

April 11, 2014 3:20 PM  
Anonymous the weather has sure been stable since global warming ended said...

remember when global warming was still happening and the IPCC said it would continue on because of all the carbon emissions and hurricanes would get frequent and fierce?

cracks me up

latest forecast from some real experts:

The 2014 Atlantic hurricane season could be a real yawner if early forecasts hold true.

Phil Klotzbach and William Gray released their outlook Thursday, calling for nine named storms, including three hurricanes, one intense. That's far below the average of 12 named storms, including six hurricanes, three major.

The two renowned climatologists note the tropical Atlantic has cooled in the past few months.

Another forecast team concurs it should be a tame season. London-based Tropical Storm Risk calls for 12 named storms, including five hurricanes.

Several climatologists predicted 2013 would be highly active but there were only two Category 1 hurricanes and neither hit the U.S. coastline.

As part of their subdued forecast, Klotzbach and Gray predict a 35 percent chance that a hurricane will strike Florida, compared with the long-term average of 51 percent. The state has gone a record eight seasons without a hurricane hit.

Klotzbach and Gray, of Colorado State University, are considered elite tropical forecasters; Gray pioneered the development of seasonal outlooks in the early 1980s.

April 11, 2014 4:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh the crystal balls!

April 11, 2014 8:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Top forecasters from Colorado State University predict a quiet 2014 Atlantic hurricane season, suggesting that nine tropical storms will form, but only three will become hurricanes.

The forecast published Thursday follows two consecutive poor forecasts: In 2012, when more than twice as many hurricanes formed as had been predicted, and in 2013, when only two hurricanes formed after a spring prediction of nine.

Insurance companies, emergency managers and the news media use the forecasts from Colorado State to prepare Americans for the season's likely hurricane threat. The team's annual predictions are intended to provide a best estimate of activity to be experienced during the upcoming season, not an exact measure, according to Colorado State.

For the U.S. coastline, Klotzbach said there is a 35% chance of a major hurricane making landfall in 2014. For the East Coast, including all of Florida, the chance of a major hurricane strike is 20%. The chance along the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to Brownsville, Texas, is 19%.

Although a calm season is predicted overall, Klotzbach cautioned coastal residents to take the proper precautions. "It takes only one landfall event near you to make this an active season," he said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will be issuing its hurricane forecast in May.

The first named storms of the Atlantic hurricane season will be Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly and Edouard.

The eastern Pacific hurricane season starts May 15. Eastern Pacific hurricanes seldom have any impact on the U.S. but can hit the west coast of Mexico. During El Niño seasons, activity in the Eastern Pacific tends to be more active than usual.

A typical year, based on weather records dating to 1950, has 12 tropical storms, of which seven become hurricanes. A tropical storm has sustained winds of 39 mph; it becomes a hurricane when its winds reach 74 mph.

The forecast was released by meteorologists Philip Klotzbach and William Gray of Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

Klotzbach said a predicted El Niño is one factor that led to their quiet forecast. El Niño, a climate pattern defined by warmer-than-normal water in the tropical Pacific Ocean, tends to suppress Atlantic hurricanes.

"The tropical Atlantic has ... cooled over the past several months, and the chances of a moderate to strong El Niño event this summer and fall appear to be quite high," Klotzbach said. "Historical data indicate fewer storms form in these conditions."

In 1997, during a very strong El Niño, only seven named storms formed, and only three were hurricanes.

Gray's team was the first organization to issue seasonal hurricane forecasts back in 1984; this is the team's 31st forecast.

This forecast is for the Atlantic basin, which includes the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Klotzbach said that of the three predicted hurricanes, only one should be a major hurricane — category 3, 4 or 5 — with sustained wind speeds of 111 mph or greater.

The Colorado State team's seasonal forecasts are a mixed bag: Since 2000, the team has forecast fewer than the actual number of hurricanes four times, forecast more five times and been almost right — within two hurricanes — five times, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

April 11, 2014 10:57 PM  
Anonymous i see stabilization said...

thanks for elaborating

but we already know

there are no adverse effects of the global warming that ceased 16 years ago

April 12, 2014 12:01 AM  
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April 12, 2014 10:26 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Yawn. Wyatt with his same tired old lie. Here's the truth:

While its true that the rate of atmospheric temperature increases have slowed over the last 15 years, the overall warming of the entire climate system has continued rapidly over the past 15 years, even faster than the 15 years before that. If you look at this graph you can see that while the rate of temperature increase in the atmosphere has slowed, the atmospheric heating represents only 2% of the overall warming of the global climate. The rates of temperature increase for the remaining portions of the global climate such as upper and deep ocean temperatures, and land and ice temperatures have increased at a far greater rate. It simply isn't true that global warming has ceased.

And of course bad anonymous knows its not true there have been no consequences:

Antoni Lewkowicz of the University of Ottawa has studied several northern landslides and rockslides that he says can be at least partially attributed to thinning and weakening of ice or permafrost caused by climate warming. In one case, an earthquake broke off a weakening glacier in the Yukon. About 500,000 tons of ice raced down a mountain. "By the time it reached the bottom it would have been going about 140 mph," Lewkowicz said. At other remote catastrophe sites, Lewkowicz has documented a bizarre situation in which thin permafrost sits atop unfrozen sand containing groundwater under pressure. The system is stable until the icy overlay gets slushy. The whole mess then gives way. Some of these events expose a layer of earth -- perhaps a very salty layer -- on which nothing can grow for years, resulting in "profound ecological effects," Lewkowicz said.


A new study finds 125 large lakes in the Arctic have vanished as temperatures rose over the past two decades. Many other lakes have shrunk. The lakes once sat atop permanently frozen soil called permafrost. Other studies have shown permafrost is melting around the world, causing low-lying ground to slump and rock to fall from mountains.

Scientists have long predicted that climate change would bring on ever-worsening droughts, especially in semi-arid regions like the U.S. Southwest. As climatologist James Hansen, who co-authored one of the earliest studies on this subject back in 1990, told me this week, “Increasingly intense droughts in California, all of the Southwest, and even into the Midwest have everything to do with human-made climate change.”
Why does it matter if climate change is playing a role in the Western drought? As one top researcher on the climate-drought link reconfirmed with me this week, “The U.S. may never again return to the relatively wet conditions experienced from 1977 to 1999.”

April 13, 2014 10:34 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

A new report released by Environment America Research & Policy Center analyzed more than 80 million daily precipitation records across the United States from 1948 through 2011. The analysis reveals that climate change is now affecting the large rain or snowstorms.

The following are highlights from the report:

•Extreme downpours – rainstorms and snow falls … are now happening 30 percent more often on average across the contiguous United States than in 1948.
•New England has experienced the greatest change with intense rainstorms now happening 85 percent more often than in 1948.
•Not only are extreme downpours more frequent, but they are more intense. The total amount of precipitation produced by the largest storm in each year at each station increase by 10 percent over the period of analysis, on average across the contiguous United States.

But the United States is not the only country to experience extreme rain, snow, and flooding. Australia saw the country’s worst floods since 1974. A surge of rain in Brazil caused deadly landslides north of Rio de Janerio. Rainfall during June to September’s monsoons season in Thailand was up to 80% higher than the season average according to the WMO.
Birds in Argentina and Antarctica are dying from shifts in weather. Many chicks die from extremes of temperature and rainfall and in some years, climate change was biggest cause of death

A pair of new studies highlight the plight of penguin colonies trying to cope with the effects of global warming in Argentina and Antarctica.. At both locations, the beguiling birds face an uncertain future.

Climate change is killing chicks from the world’s biggest colony of Magellanic penguins at Punta Tombo, Argentina, by increasing the rate of drenching rainstorms and heatwaves, say scientists.. Meanwhile Adelie penguins on Ross Island, Antarctica, are finding it harder to feed as melting sea ice fragments form giant icebergs. Protected only by a downy coat, the Magellanic chicks can be left to struggle and die when rainstorms hit their colony. At other times, faced with extreme heat, their lack of waterproofing means they cannot cool off by taking a dip.

April 13, 2014 10:34 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change latest report shows how global warming is already affecting the way people live and what will happen in the future, including a worldwide drop in income.

"Throughout the 21st century, climate change impacts will slow down economic growth and poverty reduction, further erode food security and trigger new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger," the report says.

"Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low- and lower-middle income countries and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries with increasing inequality."

For people living in poverty, the report says, "climate-related hazards constitute an additional burden."

The report says scientists have high confidence especially in what it calls certain "key risks":

—People dying from warming- and sea rise-related flooding, especially in big cities.

—Famine because of temperature and rain changes, especially for poorer nations.

—Farmers going broke because of lack of water.

—Infrastructure failures because of extreme weather.

—Dangerous and deadly heat waves worsening.

—Certain land and marine ecosystems failing.

"Human interface with the climate system is occurring and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems," the 29-page summary says.

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April 13, 2014 10:48 AM  
Anonymous Enjoy today's 40 degree temperature drop said...

Express Forecast

Today: Periodic rain and showers, temperatures falling. Highs: 65-70 (early), 40-50 (5 p.m. or so).
Tonight: Rain or snow showers early, cold. Lows: 27-33.

April 15, 2014 7:13 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I don't believe there's a scientific concensus on it yet, but some climatoligists believe global warming is going to make parts of Canada, the United States, and Europe permanently colder.

Global warming has resulted in the jet stream taking a large southerly dip bringing colder arctic air down into north america which resulted in the colder than normal temperatures in parts of the U.S this winter. The dilution of salt in the seawater and the warming of the oceans may change the ocean currents that normally move from south to north bringing warmer temperatures and prevent the warming effect that would normally take place.

Now we know bad anonymous/Wyatt will play willfully stupid and say "Uh, duh, global warming can't be happening if its getting colder." but what global warming will be doing in this scenario is causing the Arctic to be much warmer than it should be and even though that warmer (for the Arctic) air is pushed southward by the re-directed jetstream that air is cooler than normal for parts of southern Canda and the northeastern U.S. Even though parts of Canada, the U.S., and europe will be colder the rest of the planet is warmer and the average global temperature is warmer. It is possible for localized areas of the planet to get cooler while the planet as a whole warms.

If you can get a look at some of NASA's temperature coded images for the globe for the past year where cooler than normal temperatures are shown in blue and green and warmer than normal temperatures are shown in orange and red you see a blue green patch over north america and the vast bulk of the planet in orange/red.

April 16, 2014 1:22 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

When I say some climatoligists believe global warming will make parts of Canada, the U.S. and Europe permanently colder I should have said that is relative. They may be colder for 100, 200, or some unknown long term number of years presumably if global warming continues and passes a tipping point where it spirals out of control eventually these parts of the globe will start warming up again and become warmer than normal as well.

April 16, 2014 1:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"there are no adverse effects of the global warming"

California Drought Driving Up Food Prices

"A head of lettuce could go up as much as 62 cents, an avocado may increase by 35 cents and a pound of tomatoes appears to be headed for a 45-cent hike, according to a study that examined the effects of California's drought on food prices.

"It seems like they fluctuate a lot," shopper Benisa Berry said of food prices. "It seems like it's on sale one week and then you go the next day and it's like twice as much."

Carol Benevidez, of Windmill Farms in San Ramon, said the freeze in January combined with the unpredictable weather and drought are driving up prices.

"Customers are definitely going to see the cost increase and it's going to be across the board for everyone, from owners to customers unfortunately," Benevidez said.


A lime that used to sell for 33 cents is now 79 cents, and come summer Benevidez said more produce will be impacted by the state's lack of water including squash, lettuce and stone fruits like peaches and nectarines.

"We have gotten word from farmers that they either have to cut back on crops or just not plant at all," Benevidez said.

Grocers in response will have to import the produce, which comes at a cost.

"So we're paying over a $150 per box of limes and we're mainly only able to get those out of Mexico right now because we have nothing really here in California," Benevidez said..."

April 16, 2014 4:01 PM  
Anonymous Another adverse effect of climate change said...

Beef prices hit record highs. Four ways to save.

"As you prepare for BBQ season, the cost to throw a steak on the grill has never been higher—and that price doesn’t look to come down anytime soon.

A spike in beef prices has a greater immediate impact on the family wallet than that of most food items because, economists say, beef is a single-ingredient item. Rises in wheat or corn prices aren’t immediately felt in, say, the cost of a box of cereal because of the mix of ingredients inside, but there’s no buffer with a rise in the cost of beef—it is felt immediately at the market.

The cost of “all-fresh” USDA choice-grade beef in February reached a record retail price of $5.28 per pound, compared to $4.91 at the same time last year and $3.97 in 2008. That’s the highest price for beef since 1987. The cost of ground beef rose to $3.55 in February, up 56% since 2010.

Years of drought in cattle country have cut the American herd to its lowest level since 1951. And the rising fortunes and appetites for U.S. beef in Asia, especially China, have raised the competition over who will get American steaks. Analysts at Rabobank reckon the growth in global beef demand will continue to come mainly from China, where the domestic production of meat can’t meet rising demand.

And prices will likely remain high as ranchers struggle to replenish herds and as rain levels in ranching states raise questions whether pastures can support an increase, the Associated Press reports.


“We’ve seen strong prices before, but nothing this extreme,” Dennis Smith, a commodities broker for Archer Financial Services in Chicago, told the Los Angeles Times. “This is really new territory."

What can you do?

Rising international demand and extreme weather will hit U.S. food prices in the coming year—the USDA expects all food costs to rise between 2.5% and 3.5% in 2014. We’re already seeing the effect of rising beef costs as chains such as McDonald’s have revamped their dollar menus and restaurants begin serving smaller cuts of meat and alternative choices such as turkey burgers.

Choosing chicken, turkey or fish is one way many shoppers can beat rising meat costs. “It does seem like consumers are making the choice to get the ground turkey instead of ground beef, or the filet of salmon instead of the filet of beef,” Richard Volpe, a research economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, recently told NBC...."

April 17, 2014 7:33 AM  
Anonymous Saved by Obamacare 1 said...

Saved by Obamacare

"When my insurance dropped me in 2000, I was a self-employed writer with two kids. The company no longer covered clients in Maine, where I live, and though my own health was good, going without coverage was not an option. Eventually I signed on with the Maine arm of a national plan, got the lowest possible premium with the highest deductible, and until this past March, stepped outside each month, stuck my money — some years, almost a quarter of what I earned — into an envelope, wrapped the envelope around a large rock, and tossed it into the frigid waters of Penobscot Bay, where green crabs devoured it.

Kidding! There were no rocks, and no icy bay: Each month I mailed my premium to my insurance company, and they fed it to invasive crustaceans. Or not — I have no idea what they did with my checks, other than cash them. I certainly got little medical care in return. I was out of pocket for nearly everything — doctor’s visits, prescription medications, you name it. The deductible was $15,000, for myself and each of my children. My premiums rose yearly — sometimes, twice in a single year.

Let me make it clear that I have always considered myself very lucky. My kids’ health has been generally good, and so has my own. Still, as a writer who, like a lot of Mainers, is self-employed, I have a limited income. I became adept at scouring the local papers for any kind of free preventative healthcare — flu clinics and immunizations and Well Child clinics for my children, cholesterol and glucose screenings for me. On sunny weekends, we’d go to health fairs. When I turned 50, because of my age and income, I became eligible for free mammograms and Pap tests.

When my kids were sick, I never hesitated to take them to the doctor or pay for their medications. One of my children developed migraines as a teenager, so there were more doctor’s visits, tests and prescriptions. One of my children has asthma, as do I, so there were nebulizers, inhalers and other meds to pay for. But as my premiums continued to rise, I saw my own doctor less often, maybe once a year. This made me feel even more detached from my own medical care. Again, fortunately, my health always seemed good. I take an antidepressant for seasonal affective disorder: That, along with the asthma inhalers, is the only medication I use regularly.

My coverage with my old insurer began on Jan. 1, 2001. This week I contacted them to request the total amount I had paid out in premiums since signing on. Their records extend only as far back as 2003, but the total since that time was $49,210.69. Factor in another $2,800 (a lowball estimate) for the first two years’ premiums, with perhaps an additional $8,000 (a very low estimate) on medications, doctors’ visits, et cetera.

So, from 2001 until February of this year, I spent at least $60,000 in health insurance and associated medical costs (routine doctor’s visits, medication and the like) that were not covered by insurance. One could counter that my insurance premiums bought me peace of mind — but not with a $15,000 deductible for myself and my children. $60,000 represents about three years’ income for me. That’s enough money to buy a house (here in Maine, anyway). Enough money to invest in an IRA or retirement plan that I might have been able to draw on as I get older.

Enough money to feed a lot of green crabs.

Earlier this year, my monthly insurance premium went up to $466.35 (that was for me and my dependent son). My plan did not pay for preventative screenings — colonoscopies and the like — or for annual checkups. All those costs went toward the $15,000 deductible...."

April 17, 2014 9:56 AM  
Anonymous Saved by Obamacare 2 said...

"...In February, as soon as I filed my taxes, I went online to www.healthcare.gov. The website was down, so I called the 800 number listed and after a short wait was connected to a very nice youngish-sounding man who apologized for the difficulty with the online process.

“But you can sign up right now by phone if you want,” he said.

So I did. It took about half an hour. I provided all my info and that for my son. The nice guy on the phone said, “OK, let’s look at what’s available in your state.”

The first choice he read off was Maine’s new private insurance plan. (Disclosure: My brother-in-law works for this company. The only other insurer in Maine is my previous, national insurer.)

“Now, here’s a plan that has a $1,500 deductible. You and your son each get one free checkup a year, free preventative screenings, low-cost prescription medications.”

“How much is that plan?” I asked.

He did the math. “$51.56 a month,” he said at last.

I started to cry.

The following weekend, I saw a friend at a party — I’ll call her Lorelei. We hadn’t run into each other in six months or so. After chatting for a few minutes, Lorelei said, “You know, I had cancer.”

“You did?” (Lorelei is a few years younger than me, a non-drinker, non-smoker, vigorous hiker, etc. She also looked great, but she always looks great.)

“Yeah. I figured, I was a few years older than 50, I should have a colonoscopy. It turned out I had colon cancer. They treated me, I had part of my colon removed. Now I’m a little tired but otherwise fine.”

The next day, I emailed Lorelei and got the name of her doctor. I’m 57 and knew that I should have been screened for colon cancer after turning 50, but my old insurer didn’t pay for the procedure. On March 1, I mailed off my first premium to my new insurer. I made sure the check cleared, then called Lorelei’s doctor and made an appointment for a colonoscopy. I chatted with the receptionist, who told me the cost of the screening was $2,500. If any polyps were found, removing them would incur an extra cost. I called my insurance company to make sure all this would be covered as preventative care. It was.

A week later I got my prescriptions refilled — including the albuterol inhaler I had never been able to afford. The total cost ordinarily would have been about $240. Now it was less than $20...."

April 17, 2014 9:56 AM  
Anonymous Saved by Obamacare 3 said...

...A few Mondays ago, I finally had my colonoscopy. No, the prep wasn’t fun, although the gallon of stuff I had to drink actually tasted pretty good (drinking it with a straw helps). During the procedure, a large polyp was removed. Or so I was told: I don’t remember a thing. Afterward I went home and slept. Late the following afternoon, the doctor called.

“You were very, very lucky,” he said. He sounded somber, and went on to explain that the kind of precancerous polyp he’d removed, and the place where he’d found it, were both indicative of a highly aggressive form of colon cancer. The polyp was also very difficult to see and could easily have been missed if I hadn’t done such a good prep (go Miralax!).

“If you hadn’t had that colonoscopy when you did, and had that polyp removed, within a year you would have had cancer,” he said. “Maybe two years. Maybe three.”

He spoke to me for at least 20 minutes, explaining exactly what he’d done and the different kinds of polyps that could be found during screening. He also told me that while the recommended time between colonoscopies is usually five years, I would need to come back in six months. If that test looked clean, I could wait five years before the next one. I told him that one reason I’d made the appointment was because I finally had decent insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The other reason was Lorelei.

“I remember Lorelei,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “You call her and tell her ‘Thank you.’”

I will be out of pocket for some portion of my colonoscopy in six months — the second procedure is considered diagnostic, not preventative. And once my son is on his own and paying for his own insurance, my own premium will go up.

As a 57-year-old writer, I have no pension, no IRA and virtually no savings. But my mortgage is paid off, my old Subaru (250,000 miles) still runs, and I finally have decent health insurance that I can afford. The way I look at it, in my first month of coverage, ACA has already saved me about $4,350 — and maybe my life."

April 17, 2014 9:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In a remarkable rebound from the botched rollout of Obamacare, 8 million peoplehave signed up for private health insurance via the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act since October, President Barack Obama announced during a press briefing at the White House Thursday.

April 18, 2014 8:24 AM  
Anonymous just ask nate silver said...

President Barack Obama announced triumphantly that 8 million people selected a private insurance plan through the health care exchanges created by legislation known as Obamacare. He added his own interpretation of the numbers: "This thing is working."

At the same time, however, Democratic candidates across the country still see the health care law as a drag on their campaigns in the midterm elections. After four years of trying, there is still no evidence that the president's signature piece of legislation has become popular. If the law was really working, and voters were excited about it, Democratic candidates would be talking about it all the time, rather than trying to change the subject.

There's a simple rule to evaluate contradictions like this. When the numbers and the behavior disagree, there's something wrong with the numbers.

At one level, of course, it's possible to challenge the 8 million figure itself. As anybody following the story has heard repeatedly, the number includes a decent number of people who haven't paid their premiums and aren't covered. It also includes a number of people who signed up through the exchange only because the health care law took away their previous insurance.

Still, no matter what the final numbers show, at least a few million more people have health insurance now than they did a year ago.

The president's triumphal tone suggests that this is self-evidently good news and reason to celebrate the success of his health care law. He says that candidates from his party should be proud of the law and defend it. But that's not likely to happen, and the reasons are deeper than disputes about how many people actually signed up through a health care exchange.

The first is that many people are finding out that the insurance they bought through an exchange doesn't really ensure they'll get medical care. There have been repeated stories of people finding out that even though they have insurance, they can't find a doctor who will accept it. The Wall Street Journal, for example, reports that residents of New Hampshire's capital city "have to drive to other cities to get covered hospital care." Buying a product that doesn't work is a sure way to create an angry customer.

Additionally, the health care law has created even more angry customers who have found out that they have to change doctors. For some, that's just a minor inconvenience. For others, it's a huge problem.

And, of course, the law is making health insurance more expensive. The head of Aetna, Mark Bertolini, and other industry executives have said they expect to see significant price hikes from the law. That impacts tens of millions of Americans -- including many who were happy with their insurance before Obama's law was passed.

What all of this means is that the president's claim of 8 million enrollees is not something to be dismissed or ignored. But the claim's incomplete and a bit like saying a baseball score is eight. Eight runs in a major league baseball game is a good thing, but you can't really evaluate it unless you know how many runs the other team scored.

And, for the president's health care law, the negatives are still piling up a lot faster than the positives.

COPYRIGHT 2014 SCOTT RASMUSSEN

April 21, 2014 10:56 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Despite christianity's almost constant criticism of atheism as necessarily entailing “moral relativism,” its own moral view is, of necessity, a relativist one. Let's quote something written by Peter Hess of the National Center for Science Education about the first episode of the new Cosmos and its focus on the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno:



"It is odd therefore that Cosmos focuses almost exclusively on the marginal case of Giordano Bruno. Of course, I am not defending Bruno’s persecution and death—no decent human being now would ever condone burning a person alive for any reason. Moreover, in 2014 we view legitimate theological dissent very differently than did our ancestors.

But the circumstances were quite different 400 years ago. According to the 16th century Italian legal code and the customs of Renaissance politics, Bruno was judged by an ecclesiastical court to be an obdurate heretic for refusing to cease in promulgating his theological ideas. As such he was deserving of capital punishment and was turned over for execution by the civil arm in Rome. In the 21st century we inhabit a very different era, a religiously pluralistic age of largely secular states in which the nature and exercise of authority are vastly different than they were in Post-Reformation Italy."

I am very glad to see that the sentence in bold type has been edited, with this note:


"As such he was subject to capital punishment and was turned over for execution by the civil arm in Rome. [*Editor note: The preceding sentence originally said Bruno was "deserving of" capital punishment. Clearly a misstatement on our part!]"

Glad to see that. And Peter Hess is certainly no fundamentalist (he is the Director of Religious Community Outreach for the NCSE and, as far as I know, a rather liberal Christian). But this response is still accurate:


"It hadn’t occurred to me before in quite this way. But religious fundamentalism and dogma doesn’t just often end up being morally relativistic in some screwed-up ways. It positively demands it. If you’re going to insist that a holy book written hundreds or thousands of years ago is the permanent and perfect moral guidebook written by God — then you’re stuck with defending behaviors that were considered ethical and even admirable at the time they were written, but that we now recognize as morally repulsive.

It’s a funny thing. Religious believers — especially the fundamentalist ones, or the ones attached to specific religious dogma or an authoritative religious structure — are always going on about the horrors of secular moral relativism. They’re always going on about how, without a belief in an ultimate divine moral arbiter, we would be morally lost: unmoored, unanchored, unable to distinguish right from wrong, basing our moral choices solely on what we find immediately self-serving or convenient.

But it isn’t the atheists who are excusing, defending, minimizing, and rationalizing the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno."

Quite true. And for those who accept that the Bible is the word of God and all true, they have little choice but to turn to moral relativism to defend much of the barbarism found within it. The slaughter of the Midianites, including innocent children? Well there must have been a good reason for God to do that, right? Well no, there doesn’t. God commands things in the Bible that even Adolf Hitler would not and did not do. If you’re going to claim this God is the source of all morality, you are forced into some seriously incoherent rationalizations to defend that.

April 21, 2014 12:52 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous posted "Democratic candidates across the country still see the health care law as a drag on their campaigns in the midterm elections. After four years of trying, there is still no evidence that the president's signature piece of legislation has become popular. If the law was really working, and voters were excited about it, Democratic candidates would be talking about it all the time, rather than trying to change the subject.".

False. The poll numbers have been improving for Obamacare and now more people support tha law than oppose it. Even the percentage of Republicans who think the law is a bad thing has dropped by 20 percentage points. Democrat candidates are starting to run ads about the benefits of Obamacare that the Republicans want to take away. Word of mouth is increasingly countering Republican lies about the law as more and more people find either the law benefits them or someone they know who is now covered despite pre-existing conditions or a previous cap on coverage. As the poll numbers continue to improve more and more Democrat candidates will be campaigning for the law and it will be Republicans who are on the defensive because Republican governors have denied health care coverage to 8 million people who would have otherwise been covered by the laws medicaid expansion which is almost entirely paid for by the federal government. A study shows among all the states rejecting expansion, the authors calculate the resulting death toll at between 7,115 and 17,104.


Wyatt/bad anonymous posted "At one level, of course, it's possible to challenge the 8 million figure itself. As anybody following the story has heard repeatedly, the number includes a decent number of people who haven't paid their premiums and aren't covered. It also includes a number of people who signed up through the exchange only because the health care law took away their previous insurance.".

April 21, 2014 1:51 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

False. At most about 10% of people might not pay their premiums and its likely to be a lot less than that which means the law will still have exceeded its goal. Those plans that were cancelled were junk plans that didn't cover anything significant so none of those people really lost coverage, they gained it.
About 5 million people that never had insurance before are now covered under the laws medicaid expansion and an additonal 2 million people have signed up directly with insurance companies rather than using the healthcare exchanges. And that's not including the people up to the age of 26 now covered under their parents health care plans that wouldn't have otherwise had insurance.

By 2016 there will be aproximately 25 million people covered under Obamacare and Republicans will find its a losing position to campaign on taking healthcare away from all those people. Republicans might do well in the mid-terms if Obamacare's popularity increases too slowly but by 2016 it'll be a whole different story for sure.


Wyatt/bad anonymous posted "The first is that many people are finding out that the insurance they bought through an exchange doesn't really ensure they'll get medical care. There have been repeated stories of people finding out that even though they have insurance, they can't find a doctor who will accept it. The Wall Street Journal, for example, reports that residents of New Hampshire's capital city "have to drive to other cities to get covered hospital care.". Additionally, the health care law has created even more angry customers who have found out that they have to change doctors. For some, that's just a minor inconvenience. For others, it's a huge problem."

April 21, 2014 1:52 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Typical republican lying through anecdote. They take isolated cases and pretend that's typical of all people getting healthcare under the law - it isn't. Republicans have no numbers to back up their claims, its just all lies. The typical person getting healthcare is getting more coverage at a lower cost, and extremely few people are finding they were better off before the laws passage. While a few people have had to change doctors, this is no different than it was before the law was passed when health care insurance providers might change the doctors in a network or a person would change jobs and find the coverage at a new job didn't have their previous job in the network.

Wyatt/ bad anonymous posted "And, of course, the law is making health insurance more expensive. The head of Aetna, Mark Bertolini, and other industry executives have said they expect to see significant price hikes from the law. That impacts tens of millions of Americans -- including many who were happy with their insurance before Obama's law was passed.".

Once again, all lies through anecdotal opinion. The congressional budget Office has documented that health care costs are increasing at a slower rate than they have in decades and the average health care insurance premium has dropped by 15%. Further the Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare will decrease the deficit.

April 21, 2014 1:53 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Republicans have done a great job of lying about the healthcare law and that has greatly slowed its acceptance. If you ask the people who oppose Obamacare if its a good thing they say no, but if you ask them if they like the specific features of Obamacare:

80% support letting young adults stay on their parents plan

77% support free preventative care

74% support the medicaid expansion

70% support ending insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions

Republicans have been able to flood the airwaves with lies about Obamacare but as more and more people get covered word of mouth spreads about what Obamacare really is its popularity inevitably increases. Repulicans can keep lying but that won't stop the reality of what Obamacare really does from getting out.

Republicans are now caught in a bind. They've put all their cards into the "repeal Obamacare" basket but the majority of Americans don't want the law repealed and Republicans have nothing to replace it with. The only tentative ideas they've offered for replacement sound exactly like Obamacare.

April 21, 2014 2:07 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Now that Obamacare is obviously a big success Republicans are going through the classic stages of grief. First they were outraged and now they're in denial. By 2016 they'll reach acceptance of the facts.

April 21, 2014 2:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

supporters of gay marriage are, belatedly, realizing how totalitarian homosexual advocates are

a new attempt is being made to save the movement but it may be too late:

According to an increasingly influential bloc of same-sex marriage supporters, Americans cannot reasonably disagree any longer. The Constitution obviously mandates it, they say; no sensible person can dispute the proposition that legalizing it is just and will advance the public interest. Explicitly opposing same-sex marriage, these proponents insist, places a person beyond the pale.

Friends of moderation and good sense, therefore, should laud the approximately 50 distinguished advocates of both gay marriage and freedom—including University of Minnesota Law School professor Dale Carpenter, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Charles Murray, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch, and star blogger Andrew Sullivan—who have issued a compelling public statement, “Freedom to Marry, Freedom to Dissent.”

Moved to action by the Brendan Eich affair, the signatories—coming from the political left, right, and middle—argue that opposition to gay marriage should not be considered an intolerable offense.

In early April, two weeks after taking over as chief executive officer of the Silicon Valley software company Mozilla, Eich was forced to resign by a groundswell of condemnation from the pro-same-sex marriage community. His offense was to donate in 2008—when then-candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden publicly opposed same-sex marriage—$1,000 to support Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that restricted marriages recognized by the state to those between a man and a woman.

April 23, 2014 8:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One day after Eich stepped down, New Yorker staff writer James Surowiecki defended the outcome. “At this point,” Surowiecki writes, “a tech company having a CEO who opposes gay marriage is not all that different from a company in 1973 having a CEO who donated money to fight interracial marriage.”

This is a common analogy with a superficial logic, but it obscures more than it illuminates.

The legal prohibition in America on interracial marriage did not stem from marriage’s inner logic, and thus the struggle against it did not depend on changing marriage’s meaning. Rather, the prohibition reflected discrimination based on skin color, a practice that though originally protected by the Constitution was always antithetical to its most fundamental promise. Abolishing the prohibition was a function of understanding better and implementing more effectively the implications of the Constitution’s foundational promise of individual freedom and equality under law.

In contrast, marriage’s meaning in America was essentially bound up with long-held social norms—and the religious tenets of Christianity and Judaism—sanctioning a lifetime union between a man and woman culminating in conceiving, bearing, giving birth to, and raising children. Marriage, traditionally understood, rests on the premise of the complementarity of the sexes and the social imperative to care for the children one brings into the world.

Over the last 50 years, however, the social meaning of marriage has undergone a profound shift. The impact of the cultural upheavals of the 1960s has been revolutionary. Whereas traditional marriage placed children and family at the core, today individuals very often seek marriage in the first place to achieve a combination of love, sex, and companionship, and only secondarily give thought to children. As non-reproductive sex has become the norm, the justifications—practical and constitutional—for excluding gays from participating in the institution of marriage have weakened.

But the arguments against gay marriage haven’t vanished. Some reflect traditional values grounded in venerated religious texts whose authoritative interpretations are not easy to change. Some articulate entirely secular concerns about the consequences of expanding marriage’s definition for the institution’s role in providing a stable environment for children. And there is the federalism argument: The Constitution takes no position on marriage and therefore the question of same-sex marriage should be left up to the states.

These arguments, of course, come in many versions. The best are open to objections. They are not always advanced in good faith. And there will always be haters.

But arguments against gay marriage do not necessarily entail animus toward gays.

April 23, 2014 8:13 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

My impression is that it's less a factor of "increasingly influential supporters" saying people "cannot reasonably disagree" than it is a groundswell of people just reacting "what have you go against gays."

April 23, 2014 8:49 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Our Planet Just Had The Fourth Hottest March On Record. Happy Earth Day.

"WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal forecasters calculated that for most of the Earth, last month was one of the hottest Marchs on record — except in the United States.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday that it was the fourth hottest March in 135 years of records. The overall global temperature was 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit (0.7 degree Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average.

But in the United States, March was about a degree cooler than normal, or about a half a degree Celsius. It was the 43rd coolest March on record.

Slovakia had its hottest March on record while South Korea and Latvia had their second warmest. Northern Siberia was 9 degrees (5 C) warmer than normal. Norway and Denmark averaged nearly 7 degrees (4 C) warmer than normal."

April 23, 2014 9:18 AM  
Anonymous ask Nate Silver said...

"My impression is that it's less a factor of "increasingly influential supporters" saying people "cannot reasonably disagree" than it is a groundswell of people just reacting "what have you go against gays.""

Robert, if this groundswell has the extreme belief that anyone who has "go against gays" should be unemployed and impoverished, don't whine about the inevitable backlash

truth is, our society has decided to tolerate homosexual behavior but is not wildly giddy about it

if it becomes apparent that a totalitarian mindset is part of the package, the social contract can be remade, and the public at large will support the change

"WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal forecasters calculated that for most of the Earth, last month was one of the hottest Marchs on record — except in the United States"

most of the Earth?

one of the hottest?

again, no record set and things seem to have stabilized at a new normal

nothing to be alarmed about

everyone go about your business

April 23, 2014 9:37 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

I only whine about my joints.

I actually wasn't proposing or supporting any action on anyone's part. I was sharing my impression from news reports (and blogs) that people who support marriage don't understand non-anti-lgbt reasons for opposing it.

April 23, 2014 10:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

well, the article I posted above describes some pretty good reasons

maybe you could share it with them

my joints have been aching this week too

think Spring fever has got me jumping into the active season too fast

or could be the global cooling we're experiencing here in the US of A

April 23, 2014 10:39 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

I think for my joints I can quote Horace:

"Eheu, fugaces anni"

"Alas, the fleeting years"

April 23, 2014 11:00 AM  
Anonymous svelte_brunette said...

“In early April, two weeks after taking over as chief executive officer of the Silicon Valley software company Mozilla, Eich was forced to resign by a groundswell of condemnation from the pro-same-sex marriage community. His offense was to donate in 2008—when then-candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden publicly opposed same-sex marriage—$1,000 to support Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that restricted marriages recognized by the state to those between a man and a woman.”

“supporters of gay marriage are, belatedly, realizing how totalitarian homosexual advocates are”


I find it the height of hypocrisy that rabid anti-gay fanatics are complaining about “one of their own” QUITTING their job when One Million Moms explicitly tried to force JCPenny to FIRE Ellen DeGeneres.

The pro-gay lobby has learned how to sway people’s opinions and managed to use this in a way that was more successful than the ant-gay lobby’s propaganda machine. It must suck to have some of your own tactics come back to haunt you.

Have a gummy rainbow day!

Cynthia

April 23, 2014 11:01 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt posted “In early April, two weeks after taking over as chief executive officer of the Silicon Valley software company Mozilla, Eich was forced to resign by a groundswell of condemnation from the pro-same-sex marriage community.".


That's a lie. None of the major LGBT organizations called for Eich to be fired or made any statment on the issue. The LGBT community was largely silent about this. Eich's resignation was an internal matter brought about by the employees of Mozilla who had every moral right to call for a leader that represented all of them.

April 23, 2014 12:23 PM  
Anonymous just ask Nate Silver said...

"I find it the height of hypocrisy that rabid anti-gay fanatics are complaining about “one of their own” QUITTING their job when One Million Moms explicitly tried to force JCPenny to FIRE Ellen DeGeneres.

The pro-gay lobby has learned how to sway people’s opinions and managed to use this in a way that was more successful than the ant-gay lobby’s propaganda machine. It must suck to have some of your own tactics come back to haunt you."

well, Cinco, you use the term, "QUITTING"

and then you admit that the anti-marriage forces did this

indeed, here's a link to Equality on Trial, which organize a petition and boycott of Mozilla until Eich left:

http://equalityontrial.com/2014/04/03/victory-brendan-eich-resigned-mozilla-ceo/

but aside from your allegation of hypocrisy, you have avoided the issue

do you think that those who oppose the redefinition of marriage to include homosexuality should be considered unworthy of employment in our society?

"Have a gummy rainbow day!"

yeah, go chew on your power chord




http://equalityontrial.com/2014/04/03/victory-brendan-eich-resigned-mozilla-ceo/

April 23, 2014 2:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous proves again he has no idea what he's talking about.

Equalityontrial.com about reporting on legal cases in the continuing fight for marriage equality and is now the #1 Google search result for “Prop 8 Trial."

"Equality on Trial (formerly Prop 8 Trial Tracker) is a project of the Courage Campaign Institute, which is a part of the Courage Campaign’s online organizing network of more than 850,000 supporters in California and across the country.

Throughout the Perry v. Brown trial, Prop 8 Trial Tracker covered the trial live from the courthouse, collected all of the latest motions and court rulings on one site, and documented and responded to right-wing attacks on the process. Prop 8 Trial Tracker has attracted coverage from the New Yorker, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Atlantic Online‘s Andrew Sullivan, and dozens of various other media outlets and blogs. The site is now the #1 Google search result for “Prop 8 Trial.”

Re-branded as Equality on Trial, the site shifted gears to cover legal issues pertaining to the LGBT community, including state and federal marriage equality cases, challenges to the so-called federal Defense of Marriage Act, and more.

Jacob Combs and Scottie Thomaston serve as Equality On Trial’s Editors, helping lead our coverage of Prop 8 and the Prop 8 case, DOMA and the DOMA trials as well as other equality-related issues and court cases around the country. Courage Campaign Institute’s Founder Rick Jacobs also contributes content and led the blogging during the January 2010 trial portion of the Prop 8 case. California-based bloggers Brian Leubitz, Brian Devine and Paul Hogarth contribute legal analysis and other content to Equality on Trial. Bloggers Jeremy Hooper, Karen Ocamb and Matt Baume also frequently cross-post content on EOT.

As Prop 8 Trial Tracker, the site’s NOM Tour Tracker arm also documented and responded to National Organization for Marriage’s “One Man, One Woman” 19-state, 23-stop Summer Tour 2010 with blogging, photos and video from the road from our staff, generating coverage from news outlets around the country. Our response led to the decision of “One Man, One Woman” tour organizer and NOM strategist Louis Marinelli announcing in April 2011 that he had a change of heart on same-sex marriage equality as a result of the work Courage Campaign, its members, and NOM Tour Tracker readers did on the tour. This led to feature pieces by MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell and in Newsweek. When National Organization for Marriage launched the “Vota Tus Valores” Tour in the fall of 2010 to support US Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, NOM Tour Tracker went back on the road, documenting how fewer than a dozen people showed up at nearly every single tour stop and refuting the lies of NOM’s spokespeople. Prop 8 Trial Tracker also covers other news relating to marriage equality, such as the various lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), as well as state-based cases regarding the right of same-sex couples to marry.

For inquiries related to Courage Campaign Institute, which sponsors and funds EqualityOnTrial.com, please e-mail Eddie Kurtz, Equality On Trial site manager, via eddie AT couragecampaign DOT org. For inquiries related to the content here, please e-mail Jacob Combs via Jacob AT couragecampaign DOT org or Scottie Thomaston via Scottie AT couragecampaign DOT org. You can also follow us on Twitter and tweet at us via @equalityontrial as well as on Facebook via Testimony: Equality on Trial. Having technical problems? E-mail equalityontrial [AT] couragecampaign [DOT] org for assistance!..."

April 23, 2014 4:02 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "indeed, here's a link to Equality on Trial, which organize a petition and boycott of Mozilla until Eich left:

The link you posted showed no such thing. They (and they are merely a small news site rather than a large LGBT equality advocacy group) merely encouraged their users not to use Mozilla's browzer. There was no petition or call for Eich to be fired. You lied and your own link proves it.

HRC, Lambda Legal, GLAD, Freedom to Marry – none of them issued press releases starting a “Remove Eich” campaign. Instead, numerous tech bloggers and Mozilla employees stated they were uncomfortable with the choice of new CEO. Some of them tweeted that they were “asking” for Eich to step down – not “demanding it”.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "do you think that those who oppose the redefinition of marriage to include homosexuality should be considered unworthy of employment in our society?".

They should be treated by their employers the same way as a person who promotes the idea that blacks are inferior and don't deserve the same rights as whites.

An ohio teacher was fired after he told a black student who said he wanted to be president “the United States doesn’t need another black president” – where’s you're complaint about how he's being viciously and unfairly persecuted?

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2014/04/22/oh-teacher-fired-for-racist-statement-to-student/#more-27274

April 23, 2014 5:11 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The American middle class is no longer the world's richest and you can thank Republicans for that. The median income after taxes in Canada is now higher than the median income after taxes in the United States. Between 2000 and 2010 the income of the middle class in Canada rose 20% while the income of the middle class in the United States remained flat.

On the bright side, the richest one percent in the States are still the richest in the world and by an even bigger gap than before. Nothing like an ever growing gap between the rich and poor to encourage societal contentment.

April 23, 2014 5:21 PM  
Anonymous No petition, no boycott said...

That's right Priya

Anon lied "indeed, here's a link to Equality on Trial, which organize a petition and boycott of Mozilla until Eich left:

http://equalityontrial.com/2014/04/03/victory-brendan-eich-resigned-mozilla-ceo/"


Here's what that link goes to:

Victory! Brendan Eich has resigned as Mozilla CEO

"Brendan Eich resigned as Mozilla’s CEO today, after the controversy surrounding his support for California’s Proposition 8 and opposition to LGBT rights.

Mozilla’s blog reported the news:


'Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community.

Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.

Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.

We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.

While painful, the events of the last week show exactly why we need the web. So all of us can engage freely in the tough conversations we need to make the world better.

We need to put our focus back on protecting that Web. And doing so in a way that will make you proud to support Mozilla.'


“We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves,” they wrote.

Mozilla’s apology is really strong, and they’ve done the right thing in standing up for their LGBT employees and the community at large.

EqualityOnTrial has taken down the pop-up request urging our readers to switch browsers. We wanted to take a stand on this issue because the blog owes its existence to a community that was deeply hurt by the campaign to pass Prop 8, and by the trial that came after. Mozilla’s latest actions show they’re willing to listen to the LGBT community’s concerns.

They have not yet announced his replacement."


What the pop-up says:

"This is just a note about the changes some of you will see on the site starting today.

If you’re accessing EqualityOnTrial.com via Mozilla Firefox, you’ll notice a pop-up. We are urging our readers to access the site through a different browser. Mozilla’s CEO, Brendan Eich, opposes LGBT equality, and he donated money to the campaign supporting Prop 8 in California.

As a blog that was initially created to allow marriage equality supporters to follow the Prop 8 trial, we felt that we needed to make a statement opposing their new CEO’s actions in opposition to equal rights. [THEY HAVE FREE SPEECH TOO, JUST LIKE EICH DOES.] Prop 8′s passage hurt many Californians and LGBT people nationwide. Many of our readers were personally affected by the campaign that was waged in support of Prop 8. We felt that it was necessary to take a stand in support of everyone who has dealt with its effects.

Users who still want to access the site using Firefox will be able to do that (there is a link), but we would ask you to use another browser if you can.

Thanks"

April 23, 2014 6:19 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Further to the news that the Canadian middle class is now the world's richest rather than the American middle class:

Under Republican Paul Ryan's recently released budget plan millionaires would get on average $200,000 tax cut which would be paid for by gutting social assistance programs for the poor and by raising taxes on a typical middle class family with children by $2000.

The Republican party unanimously endorsed Ryan's budget plan.

The vast majority of Republican voters - voting agains their own best interests.

April 23, 2014 6:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

April 24, 2014 8:02 AM  
Anonymous just ask Nate and laugh at Wayne said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

April 24, 2014 8:16 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Which Are Maryland's Best High Schools? 2014 Rankings Revealed

"Montgomery County has the top high schools in Maryland, according to U.S. News and World Report.

The publication released its ranking of the state's best high schools this week, and Montgomery County Public Schools claimed the top four spots.

The rankings were based on student-teacher ratios; state proficiency test results, overall and with a particular focus on how disadvantaged students were performing; and participation rates in AP/IB programs, according to U.S. News. and World Report.

According to U.S. News, Maryland's top 10 high schools are as follows:
1. Walt Whitman High School; Bethesda
2. Thomas S. Wooten High School; Rockville
3. Poolesville High School; Poolesville
4. Richard Montgomery High School; Rockville
5. Barbara Ingram School for the Arts; Hagerstown
6. Quince Orchard High; Gaithersburg
7. Eastern Technical High School; Baltimore
8. Towson High School Law and Public Policy; Towson
9. River Hill High School; Clarksville
10.Col. Zadok Magruder High; Rockville

See the complete rankings from U.S. News and World Report."


MCPS is offering a Cybercivility Forum tonight.

Thursday, April 24, 2014
7:00-8:30 p.m.
Richard Montgomery High School Auditorium
250 Richard Montgomery Drive, Rockville, Maryland 20852

Check it out Anon-Troll.

April 24, 2014 10:15 AM  
Anonymous svelte_brunette said...

“well, Cinco, you use the term, "QUITTING"

Yes I did Anon. Not sure why you have a problem with this. I know you’re a stickler for definitions, and the article you linked to used the term “resigned,” and even the link you posted used “resigned” If you look up the word resigned ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/resign?s=t ) and scroll down a bit, you’ll find this:

Synonyms
1. withdraw. 3. abdicate, renounce; quit, leave. 4. give up, surrender, cede, forgo.

So “quit” is a perfectly reasonable term to use here.

“and then you admit that the anti-marriage forces did this”

I don’t know why the anti-marriage forces would do this. I thought they just wanted to stop gay marriage and denigrate gay people.

You seem to imply there is some big secret I wasn’t supposed to admit. A pro-gay marriage blog started a boycott of the Mozilla internet browser, using a pop-up seen when you accessed their blog. Most people reasonably assume that if something is on the public internet, it’s not really a secret. If it was supposed to be a secret, I never got the super-secret gay memo on that topic. Obviously, I need to send a note to Gay Agenda HQ.

There’s a post above that shows what the Mozilla browser protest called for. Interestingly, Eich’s resignation was never requested, mentioned, or implied. If you follow the hyperlinks in the article you referenced, you’ll get to this page:

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/

Which includes:

“On April 3, 2014 Brendan Eich voluntarily stepped down as CEO of Mozilla. It has been well documented that Brendan’s past political donations led to boycotts, protests, and intense public scrutiny. Upon his resignation, Brendan stated: “Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader.” The intense pressure from the press and social media made it difficult for Brendan to do his job as CEO and effectively run Mozilla.

Since then, there has been a great deal of misinformation. Two facts have been most commonly misreported:

1. Brendan was not fired and was not asked by the Board to resign. Brendan voluntarily submitted his resignation. The Board acted in response by inviting him to remain at Mozilla in another C-level position. Brendan declined that offer. The Board respects his decision.

2. Around the time of Brendan’s appointment as CEO, three members of the Board of Directors resigned from the Mozilla Corporation Board. None of these board members resigned over any concerns about Brendan’s beliefs. Gary Kovacs and Ellen Siminoff had previously stated they had plans to leave, and John Lilly did not resign over any concerns about Brendan’s personal beliefs. Katharina Borchert was appointed to replace one of the empty Board seats after Brendan was appointed CEO.”

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that the political and social pressure instigated by the EqualityOnTrial blog was a contributing factor, or possibly even THE contributing factor in Eich deciding to quit, resign, or whatever synonym you prefer. That was his choice, and I’m not going to begrudge him that.

I have plenty more to write, but no time at the moment.

Have a chewy caramel day!

Cynthia

April 24, 2014 10:30 AM  
Anonymous GOP Governors intent on denying healthcare for poor people forever said...

Red States Hatch Plans To Block Obamacare Even If Dems Take Over:

"Republicans are taking no chances when it comes to Obamacare's Medicaid expansion. They're closing every possible door. Under bills passed in Georgia and Kansas recently, even if a Democratic candidate were to pull off an upset and take the governor's seat, they would not be able to expand the program without the consent of the state legislature -- which will almost certainly remain Republican.

In other words, GOP lawmakers have taken steps to guarantee that many of their poorest residents will remain uninsured under the health care reform law, no matter what happens in the gubernatorial election.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) both oppose Medicaid expansion. They both look likely -- if not quite certain -- to win re-election in November. That should make the bills passed by their respective state lawmakers unnecessary, but they seem intent on guarding against even the remote possibility of a Democratic governor.

An explanation offered by a GOP lawmaker in Kansas, where the bill was signed into law by Brownback last week, points to the motive.

“Governor Brownback’s not always going to be the governor. It’s my fervent hope he’s going to be the governor for four more years after this one, but he may or may not be,” Rep. John Rubin (R) told the Wichita Eagle.

Georgia Republicans have been adamant in denying any political motivations, but the question has still been raised by the press.

“I’m totally confident that Nathan Deal is going to be re-elected governor. This is simply an opportunity for the Legislature to stake out the issue as policy,” House Speaker David Ralston told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in February. Deal hasn't signed the bill yet, but he still has time to do so. If he doesn't act, it would become law automatically. Deal has said that he approved of the policy.

Georgia and Kansas have left a combined 487,000 residents uncovered under Obamacare because they refused to expand Medicaid. And, though the law remains unpopular, a recent poll found that majorities of Georgians (54 percent) and Kansans (55 percent) support Medicaid expansion..."

April 24, 2014 10:39 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/Bad Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
April 24, 2014 8:02 AM

LOL, Wyatt is getting "dispassionate" again. I just love how he loses his temper everytime he loses the argument.

April 24, 2014 1:10 PM  
Anonymous just ask Nate how wrong Randy is said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

April 24, 2014 1:26 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

I've thought about the Brendan Eich and Mozilla controversy, and come to some conclusions.

I'm reminded of my father's story that, when he played basketball in high school, teams at all-white schools boycotted his team, not because they had an african-american player (which I assume they didn't), but because they had played schools which had black players. I would presume this was in an effort to maintain strict segregation in Virginia.

In many places in this country, supporting lgbt rights could lead to an effort to get a leader fired. Where I work, most lgbt employees aren't out, because of concern about repercussions to their employment.

Taking Mr. Eich's job simply because of a political opinion is in my opinion simply too dangerous a step to take. It can lead the haters to think their political and economic power can legitimately be used to oppress.

That said, is Eich a victim? No, clearly not. He's a very wealthy member of a majority with a history of oppression who used his money to deny rights to others. I think if he were to keep his job he would need to demonstrate that he would not use his possession to oppress, that he would be supportive of domestic partner rights, etc. (i.e. that his opinions would remain only political opinions, not impact any employees).

April 25, 2014 6:29 AM  
Anonymous go ask Nate said...

"I've thought about the Brendan Eich and Mozilla controversy"

always a good idea

"I'm reminded of my father's story that, when he played basketball in high school, teams at all-white schools boycotted his team, not because they had an african-american player (which I assume they didn't), but because they had played schools which had black players. I would presume this was in an effort to maintain strict segregation in Virginia."

I don't know why it remind you of that. The situations aren't analogous.

"In many places in this country, supporting lgbt rights could lead to an effort to get a leader fired."

don't know where these places are

can you provide examples of leaders who were fired because they support "lgbt rights"?

"Where I work, most lgbt employees aren't out, because of concern about repercussions to their employment."

well, being gay and supporting gay rights are two different things

still, are you kidding?

in Fairfax County, gays are afraid of being out?

being gay and being rabidly into gay activism are two different things as well

sure you're not conflating?

I really don't just being gay, in and of itself, is a threat to anyone's employment in the suburbs of DC

"Taking Mr. Eich's job simply because of a political opinion is in my opinion simply too dangerous a step to take"

you couldn't be righter

I think everyone is starting to realize what a dangerous precedent this is

"That said, is Eich a victim? No, clearly not. He's a very wealthy member of a majority with a history of oppression"

there's is no evidence that this guy oppressed anyone

he held the same position as Barack Obama and Joe Biden at the time he contributed to the campaign defending marriage against redefinition

"who used his money to deny rights to others"

there is no right to redefine marriage to suit your own deviancy

marriage has always been a gendered institution, with good reason

not being married doesn't involve any suffering, as will become clear if gay marriage becomes the norm

then, most gays will not get married, by choice

their work destroying the institution will have already been accomplished

April 25, 2014 10:46 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "there's is no evidence that this guy oppressed anyone".

Yes, but not for lack of trying. He contributed to a cause whose sole intent was to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians. An ohio teacher was fired after he told a black student who said he wanted to be president “the United States doesn’t need another black president” – where’s you're complaint about how he's being viciously and unfairly persecuted? There's no evidence that this guy oppressed anyone.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2014/04/22/oh-teacher-fired-for-racist-statement-to-student/#more-27274



Wyatt/bad anonymous said "he held the same position as Barack Obama and Joe Biden at the time he contributed to the campaign defending marriage against redefinition". Barack was for marriage equality before he was against it. He merely took the position against out of political expediency, he always believed in marriage equality. Besides, neither Biden nor Obama made a financial contribution towards depriving gays of equality


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "there is no right to redefine marriage to suit your own deviancy".

There is no right to define marriage for anyone other than yourself. The equal protection clause of the constitution demands that gays be given the same right to marry that heterosexuals have, and a dozen or so judges have ruled to this effect.

April 25, 2014 12:23 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "marriage has always been a gendered institution, with good reason".

Wrong on two counts. There is no good reason to deny gays the right to marry. Marriage makes them happier and more productive and this benefits them and all of society. Secondly, gay marriages have existed at many points and in many societies throughout history. The only reason we don't have more historical examples of this is that early recorded history is very incomplete and less common events were frequently not recorded - history is written by the dominant majority.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "not being married doesn't involve any suffering, as will become clear if gay marriage becomes the norm".

That's obviously false. Studies show gays and lesbians in states with bans on gay marriage have higher rates of depression and drug use. There are 1300 rights and obligations associated with marriage such as being able to visit a sick spouse in the hospital when only family members are allowed. Being denied these rights causes unjustifiable suffering.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "then, most gays will not get married, by choice their work destroying the institution will have already been accomplished".

Its irrelevant how many gays chose not to marry. What matters is that those who wish to do so be allowed to. You can't on one hand claim allowing gays to marry will destroy society and then on the other hand claim virtually no gays will marry. And of course its utter nonsense that gays marrying in any way harms the marriages of heterosexuals or society. The sky has not fallen in Massachusetts or Canada, in fat things there are better than ever since gays were allowed to marry.

April 25, 2014 12:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

If Eich had contributed $2000 to the KKK and quit his job you wouldn't see bigots like Wyatt/bad anonymous crying that someone who opposes the equality of blacks shouldn't be considered unworthy of employment in our society.

Its no different with gays and lesbians.

April 25, 2014 12:36 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Good anonymous said "WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal forecasters calculated that for most of the Earth, last month was one of the hottest Marchs on record — except in the United States"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "most of the Earth?".

Of course most of the earth. Its what's happening in general that matters not the few isolated exceptions.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "one of the hottest? again, no record set and things seem to have stabilized at a new normal".

False. Although March was one of the hottest rather than the hottest on record the average atmospheric temperatures have increased and as you've been repeatedly taught atmospheric temperatures only make up 2% of the total environmental climate and the rest of it (land and ice mass, lower and upper ocean temperatures) has set new records and is warming at an every increasing pace.

Wyatt is the perfect example of how you can show a conservative proof his beliefs are wrong and this just makes him more entrenched in his false beliefs.

April 25, 2014 12:43 PM  
Anonymous how odd of Randy to jump into someone else's conversation said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

April 25, 2014 12:43 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "April 24, 2014 1:10 PM

Comment deleted
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.".

LOL! After having his previous over the top comments rightfully removed bad anonymous continues to show he can't control his temper.

It hurts to be chronically wrong, doesn't it Wyatt?

April 25, 2014 12:45 PM  

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