Global Warming Report Dials Up the Scare Tactics

Global Warming will be so bad they had to add a new category of risks!

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.

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.

Um, if we cannot do anything about it then why worry? Just take that $30 billion or whatever Al Gore wants and use it to buy mosquito netting or building sea walls to protect against storm surge something. That will save quite a few more lives than whatever these scientists have already earmarked this money for.

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Romney Won 18-20 Year Olds? What? Really?

I never knew this fact about the 2012 election.

As George Washington University political science Prof. John Sides wrote earlier this month, 18-year-old voters casting their initial ballot in 2012 broke for Mitt Romney over Obama. Romney won 19 and 20-year-olds, too.

�The political identities of future generations will depend on economic trends and the popularity of presidents who haven�t been elected. Maybe those factors will tend to break in Democrats� favor, and maybe they won�t,� writes Professor Sides on the Monkey Cage political science blog of the Washington Post

It will be interesting to see how these new voters do in 2016 when they are just getting out of college. Will they be saddled with debt with no job prospects on the horizon? Victims of the Obameconomy they will probably still be effected by the slow-assed recovery. 

They get to stay on their parents health plans for few years but that is if their parents still have them. We might see a wave of businesses cutting their health plans and save money by taking the penalty. So they might not even get a chance to stay on their parents plan once they graduate.

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Hypocrite of the Year: Gun Grabbing California State Senator Leland Yee a Gun Runner?

I think this may have gotten taken from a movie script instead of real life.

Court documents allege that Yee sought campaign donations in exchange for introducing an undercover FBI agent to an arms trafficker. An FBI affidavit says Yee talked with the undercover agent about acquiring weapons worth $500,000 to $2.5 million, including shoulder-fired missiles, from a Muslim separatist group in the Philippines.

Organizers said the arrest of Yee particularly clouds the future of two of his gun control bills.

Yee's SB47 would prohibit the use of so-called bullet buttons and other devices that allow for swift reloading of military-style assault weapons. His SB108 would require the state Department of Justice to study safe firearm storage methods. Both stalled in the Assembly last year.

I guess Yee believes that in the idea of: guns for Muslim separatist groups in the Philippines and not for thee. I wonder if he wanted to ban "bullet buttons" on the automatic weapons he wanted to sell to his Muslim terrorists, err separatist, pals? Also I wonder if he wants the Department of Justice to study safe firearm storage techniques in the terrorist camps of his pals as well? I mean Muslim terrorists might hurt themselves with the guns that Yee sold them.

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Student Loan Debt a Corrosive Acid on Students Futures?

It seems that workers saddled by tons of debt are falling behind those who are not.

Graduates who can immediately begin building equity in housing or stocks and bonds get more time to see their investments grow, while indebted graduates spend years paying principal and interest on loans. The standard student loan repayment schedule is 10 years but can be much longer.

The median 2009 net worth for a household without outstanding student debt was $117,700, nearly three times the $42,800 worth in a household with outstanding student debt, according to a report co-written by Elliott last November.

Wow that is quite a disparity. I think it is more important than ever to price a decent college. I will be willing to bet that if you graduated from a State College with only $26k in loans you would be much better off than if you had $100k in loans from some Private College. This is an especially bad rip-off if you look at this:

College degrees can pay off. College graduates ages 25 to 32 working full time earn $45,500, about $17,500 more than their peers with just a high school diploma, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data.

So if you had $100K in loans you would owe $1150 per month. That is $13,800 per year which makes you only $3700 ahead of the high school diploma person. That money can be eaten up fairly easily if you don't have health insurance and decide to buy Obamacare or whatever. If this student had the $110k that he paid back to the private school he could have most of the way toward an entire house or a pretty decent nest egg.

I guess this goes to show you that unless you go to an Ivy than it is almost always better to go to a State School than a Private School if they have comparable academic records. I would much rather owe $27k than $100k no matter what.

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New Trend Emerging: Hospitals Will Offer Their Own Health Insurance and Health Insurers Will Buy Hospitals

I guess this is a case of cutting out the middle man.

Dr. Kenneth L. Davis, CEO and  president of Mount Sinai Health System, the largest health care provider in the state of New York, said that starting next year, Mt. Sinai will begin offering its own Medicare Advantage plan. It will look for other opportunities to bring premium payments directly into the hospital system, rather than filtering them through insurance companies.

This also opens the door for Insurance Companies buying hospitals.

He noted that large insurer Wellpoint recently completed the acquisition of a health care company in California, apparently with an eye toward replicating the Kaiser model in some form.

I guess this starts the end-to-end care model of health care. You buy the insurance (hopefully at a discount) from your hospital on the Obamacare exchanges and then go to the hospital. Then the hospital charges you a co-pay and pays for the rest.

The hospital would be very good at figuring out how much they need to reimburse on what procedures. It seems to work well for Kaiser so I can see it working well for other groups of hospitals. The hospital wants to do good work so that their insurance will be sold at a good value. Also it provides built-in brand loyalty to certain hospitals as well. If you have Mt. Sinai brand insurance you will probably be going to Mt. Sinai over some other sawbones.

However, there needs to be checks in place if the insurance company owns a hospital. It would be interesting to see if certain things that are not cost effective or lose money suddenly are not done at that hospital. The article says that Mt. Sinai loses $14 million a year on mental health. Do you think WellPoint Hospital will have a money losing mental health ward? I guess these are the changes that Obamacare seems to have created.

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What? There Might Be Opportunities from Global Warming? IPCC drums Out Scientist That Believes That.

It seems that dissenters like Richard Tol from Sussex University in England need to be removed from the Global Warming Orthodoxy.

Tol said the IPCC emphasized the risks of climate change far more than the opportunities to adapt. A Reuters count shows the final draft has 139 mentions of "risk" and 8 of "opportunity".

Tol said farmers, for instance, could grow new crops if the climate in their region became hotter, wetter or drier. "They will adapt. Farmers are not stupid," he said.

He said the report played down possible economic benefits of low levels of warming. Less cold winters may mean fewer deaths among the elderly, and crops may grow better in some regions.

"It is pretty damn obvious that there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them," he said. But he said temperatures were set to rise to levels this century that would be damaging overall.

That sounds like something an economist would say. People will adapt and figure things out and that might be a benefit of global warming. However, his fellow scientists seem to disagree:

Another expert criticized Tol, saying his IPCC chapter exaggerated possible benefits.

"Of the 19 studies he surveyed only one shows net positive benefits from warming. And it's the one he wrote," said Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Unit on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.

Um, shouldn't there be more science behind trying to figure out the benefits from warming? I mean only one guy did any research on it? Or maybe that doesn't factor into the scare tactics that the Global Warming crowd wants to put on everyone.

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Obamacare Deadline Pushed Back a Few More Weeks

I swear they are just running this thing by fiat out of the White House.

The decision, scheduled for announcement Wednesday, will give people until mid-April to sign up for insurance. All they need do is check off a box on HealthCare.gov indicating that they tried to enroll by March 31. The government will not check to see if people are telling the truth. The decision to allow more sign-up time was driven by an anticipated last-minute surge in enrollments, which could leave people unable to finish the process, The Washington Post reports.

I have a feeling there won't be a "last minute surge of enrollments" because many uninsured are either unaware of the deadline or can't afford health insurance in the first place.

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Working for Michelle Obama Sounds Like Hell on Earth

She seems so easy going but this article really makes her seem like the woman from Devil Wears Prada.

For one thing, the imperative to guarantee results could be paralyzing. �That was the pressure on us,� one ex-aide told me. ��Don�t do it if it�s not going to be perfect.�� Staff knew that every event should produce positive coverage, and that all the angles had to be exhaustively researched and gamed out (not easy with a team of less than 30). But it was never completely clear what the standard of perfection should be. �There�s no barometer: The first lady having the wrong pencil skirt on Monday is just as big of a fuck-up as someone speaking on the record when they didn�t mean to or a policy initiative that completely failed,� says another former aide. �It just made you super anxious.� Another past employee described a common feeling of �how can we be the caliber that we�re expected to be with no attention and no resources and being an afterthought? And all that can make for sparks. Friction.�

This passage sounds like it was lifted from the Court of the Sun King Louis XIV:

All of this led to a culture of harsh internal judgment. Invitations to meetings with the first lady, in her office above the Jackie Kennedy Garden, became a vital status symbol, a way for staffers to measure their worth. �Every meeting was like an identity crisis, whether you got invited or not,� one former East Winger told me. Casual face-time with Mrs. Obama was coveted as a badge of insiderdom. �Everyone sort of stands at attention in a different way, or they try to make the joke, or they try to be the one noticed, or they try to get the smile,� says a former employee. �And that�s in part a yearning for acknowledgment that you�re part of this, something bigger, and that she knows who you are.� Another former employee put it more bluntly: �They don�t want to work for her; they want to be friends with her.�

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Russia Turns East? Now That is an Ominous Sign

Hmm, now this could be the new moves in the Great Game played by Putin in the next several years.

While Europe is furiously scrambling to find alternative sources of energy should Gazprom pull the plug on natgas exports to Germany and Europe (the imminent surge in Ukraine gas prices by 40% is probably the best indication of what the outcome would be), Russia is preparing the announcement of the "Holy Grail" energy deal with none other than China, a move which would send geopolitical shockwaves around the world and bind the two nations in a commodity-backed axis.

Ties looking eastward might be exactly what China and Russia needs to fend off America and Europe. I mean if Europe imposes sanctions that bite and Obama actually grows a spine then Russia could sell its product to the east instead of the west.

I mean a China/Russia axis would be perfect for both countries. The Chinese get the clean natural gas imported from their neighbor to the west and the Russians have a partner that will back it if they try to do further buffer-state satellite building.

It will also keep money in Russian pockets as America slowly moves toward energy independence. The Chinese can keep producing and growing their middle class without having to rely on America so much. In fact the Chinese could debt bomb us without ruining their own economy by relying on Russian imports to tide them over.

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Tea Party Scrambles to Stay Relevant: Finally Understands The GOP Needs to Win the Senate

I am glad that the GOP establishment and business leaders are trying to smash these idiots.

More troubling to movement leaders, GOP moneyed interests are taking aim at Tea Party lawmakers deemed disruptive and bad for the brand. Rep. Justin Amash�s hard line on the debt ceiling, for instance, outraged key business interests, including the Chamber of Commerce, which have lined up behind his primary challenger, Brian Ellis. Tea Party Express is keeping a close eye on the race, and FreedomWorks has vowed to defend Amash �punch-for-punch.�  �Five years ago, I never would have imagined the Republican Party would be coming after people the Tea Party had gotten elected,� says Keli Carender, the national grassroots coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots. �It still shocks me.�  

At the same time, Tea Partyers are fending off Republican attempts to �kneecap� the movement as a whole, says Carender. �What they�re trying to do right now is build the meme that groups like ours and the Senate Conservatives Fund are in it �for profit.� � It�s a play to discredit TPP with the conservative base and peel away the small-dollar donors it relies on, charges Carender: �Not only are we fighting liberals in the Democrat Party and liberals in the Republican Party, now we�re having to fight to maintain credibility with the base.�

Their stupidity on the debt ceiling fight needs to doom them to the dustbin of history but I think someone somewhere took them aside and told them who the real enemy is.

Goal Three, says Brandon, is identifying the best opportunities to turn blue seats red�and here is where movement leaders can sound so pragmatic you wonder if you�ve dialed Karl Rove�s house by mistake. Budowich explains, �As the movement has matured, now it�s not just about making that stand but about creating a mathematical possibility to make policy differences.� He repeatedly stresses, �Our prime objective in 2014 is to take back the Senate. The only way we can do that is by defeating Democrats.� RINO hunting is all well and good, says Budowich, but targeting �squishy Republicans� won�t pry control of the Senate away from Harry Reid.

Um, yeah John McCain is not the enemy Harry Reid is. I'm glad there are some grown-ups in the Tea Party. They should know that every time they get rid of a strong GOP candidate and replace him with some idiot the Dems will hold that seat. Now they need to have a big meeting and tell everyone "do not talk about women's issues for any reason." They need to only talk about three things Obamacare, obamacare, obamacare and they will take the Senate.

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Symantec Axes Top Guy: Is that a Good Idea after the Hack of the Decade?

With the most massive hack in US history just a few months ago I'm not sure if it is a good time to fire your CEO.

"It's a jaw-dropping move, especially because Bennett was key to the company's turnaround. I view this as a major step back ...," FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives said.

Forrester Research analyst Rick Holland said Symantec had been losing market share to nimbler network security software makers such as FireEye Inc, Palo Alto Networks Inc and Checkpoint Systems Inc.

Symantec said it was committed to its target of more than 5 percent organic growth and higher than 30 percent adjusted operating margin by fiscal 2017.

However, BMO Capital analyst Joel Fishbein said it would be difficult for Symantec to achieve 5 percent revenue growth without mergers and acquisitions or divestiture due to a continuing fall in its main PC security and storage businesses.

Part of the problem is that Norton Anti-Virus is a primarily a consumer PC based program and that platform is slowly dying. You don't hear much about tablets or smart phones being hacked as much as PCs are so there really isn't a need for their main product. 

Most corporations would use a different kind of anti-virus product or just go to FireEye for an end-to-end product. I think Symantec really needs to buy out a new era network security firm like FireEye in order for them to stay relevant. 

Also with a look at their site it seems that there are like a 100 different products jumbled together in a mess. Let's say I'm a small business looking to beef up my security after hearing about Target getting hacked. I have no idea where to start or what product I should be looking for. Do I need Risk Automation Suite or NetBackup Appliance 5000 series or what. They seriously need to break these into different groups to make it easier to look at. 

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Putin Levels Sactions against Lawmakers: Yeah I guess they Weren't Going to Siberia on their Recess Afterall

The real tragedy is these lawmakers have to switch to Ciroc from Stolichnaya when they get drunk before major votes.

Most of the six lawmakers who ended up on Putin's list, which include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Mary Landrieu, D-La., Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Dan Coats, R-Ind., fired off statements ribbing Putin for restricting their non-existent vacation travel in Russia and imaginary bank accounts.

"I guess this means my spring break in Siberia is off, my Gazprom stock is lost, and my secret bank account in Moscow is frozen," McCain wrote in a statement today. "Nonetheless, I will never cease my efforts on behalf of the freedom, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea."

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Why do the GOP Not Believe in Climate Change? Yeah it is The Big Government Angle

I have to agree with this assertion of why the GOP does not believe in climate change in such big numbers.

A third interpretation is that political preferences have leaked into the perception of fact. Republicans may conflate the existence of climate change with the need for more government -- more federal research, more federal programs, more intervention in the economy, and more taxes to pay for all of it. Rather than relax their objection to government, maybe it's easier to look for reasons to think that climate change isn't happening, or isn't serious.

Yeah climate change might be happening but all the lies told about it have already clouded the perception of the whole debate. We were told that all of the arctic sea ice would be gone by 2014 and it's still there. We were told about mega-storms and earth-wide calamity if things aren't done right now. Then you have scientists hiding the decline and cooking the books on their own research and the whole thing has been tainted.

You add this to people who are already skeptical of the government doing anything of substance other than shoveling your tax money down a hole. It is any wonder why many Republicans are skeptical about climate change and see it as yet another government hole to pour money down. I mean the Post Office is bankrupt, they can't get a healthcare website to work so why do you think the government can change the climate of the entire earth to make it not be so warm in a 100 years?

It also sounds like another way for the government to control you even more than they already do. It just seems like an inflated issue to try to squeeze more money out of you so Al Gore and his ilk can become rich. If the climate scientists used practical arguments at the beginning instead of scare tactics and calling everyone that disagrees with them anti-science maybe they would have had a chance to convince people. Instead you are dubbed a denier that wants to destroy the earth.

They could have made the argument that renewables and nuclear energy helps ween ourselves off of foreign oil and helps save  middle class Americans money. Now with fracking even that argument seems pointless.

Also the recession did not help matters when we have poor countries begging for billions that the rich countries would have to go deeper into debt to pay. People have just washed their hands of the whole thing and figured paying more tax money to stop what might be bad in the future just doesn't fit into their budget anymore.

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New York Attorney General Goes After High Frequency Traders

I guess the era of millisecond trading might be severely curtailed if the New York Attorney General gets his way.


"Rather than curbing the worst threats posed by high-frequency traders, our markets, as structured today, are increasingly too focused on catering to them," he said on Tuesday in a speech at New York Law School.

Schneiderman has begun meetings with the exchanges and alternative trading venues to discuss reforms, according to a person familiar with the situation.

He also looks like he will be going after so-called "dark pools" where big investors have to go in order to buy large amounts of stock to avoid tipping off high frequency traders that inflate prices on them. It would be interesting to see if he can get this done in order to avoid another "flash crash" or other nonsense caused by these traders.

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The NSA Listens to Every Phone Call in an Unnamed Foregin Country (cough, Iran, cough, cough)

I wonder if this counts as violating this countries sovereignty or not?

This NSA program dates to 2009 and is called MYSTIC, according to documents obtained by the Post. It is used to intercept conversations in one specific country, but documents show the NSA intends to use it in other countries, the Post said.

It records all conversations across the unidentified foreign country and stores billions of them for 30 days. The program wasn't fully operational until 2011. One of the program's senior managers told the Post that MYSTIC is comparable to a time machine, meaning voices from any call can be replayed without requiring the NSA to identify a person before the conversations are collected.

Hmm, it might be Afghanistan but I have a hard time thinking they make billions of calls every 30 days. In any case people wonder why the US is so hated in the rest of the world. I mean Ahmed's call to his grandmother about buying onions has been intercepted by NSA snoops and pored over for hidden meanings.

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