WE ONLY HAVE 24 MONTHS TO SAVE THE PLANET!!

Go here. 

Trust me, just hit that link.  I'll be here when you get back. 

(As long as you do it within 24 months, or to be exact, within 630 days, or 15,120 hours of December 10th, 2014.)  We'll all be past the tipping point after that. 

Here's the link again.  I know how you folks are about hitting links. 

If we've passed that horrific date (December of 2016) without taking significant action on Climate Change, we will have passed yet another Tipping Point.

It will be too late to recycle.  It will be too late to stop flying, or to continue sorting through our garbage like raccoons.  It will be waaaay to late to send Al Gore's Kleiner-Perkins Investment Group any money for carbon offsets. 

It will be too late to begin stumbling around in the dark all night like a pack of aboriginal tribesmen just recently down from the trees. 

By December something of 2016, it will be too late to tax the carbon emitters who have made your world an unimaginable paradise (if your grandparents could see you now). 

It will be too late to make governments more powerful. 

I hope you've hit that link by now....

Have you had your giggle?  (I love the sound that Tipping Point deadlines make when we go flying past them.) 

This is like the U.N.'s threat that we'll have fifty million climate refugees by 2010. 

It's like Al Gore's fake concern that the polar ice caps will be gone by 2013. 

It will be like all of the other failed climate predictions, and there are a lot of them. 

The climate prediction business (and it's nothing but a business) is much like all the predictions for the return of Christ.  You can be wrong all you want, then just re-arrange the scriptures, come up with a new date, and still not lose very many followers.  And if you drop out altogether, the business will continue without you. 

Sometime after December 2016, the proprietors of the 100 Months And Counting website will look around at the ice caps, the snow, and the rest of the typical wintertime weather, and they'll shut down their Tipping Point Apocalypse website. 

Then they'll move on to the next gimmick and the next marketing/scaremongering stunt, never doubting the righteousness of their cause.  There's a sucker born every minute. 

 

Some good links on the recent Global Warming

Glorious links on Global Warming from The Drudge Report.


HISTORIC FREEZE: WINDCHILLS 70 BELOW ZERO...
COLDEST IN 20 YEARS...
'LIFE-THREATENING'...
CHICAGO TEACHERS UNION DEMANDS SCHOOLS CLOSE...
2010'S SET TO BECOME SNOWIEST DECADE ON RECORD FOR EAST... KILLER CHILLER MAP...
MAN BURNS DOWN HOUSE TRYING TO THAW PIPES WITH BLOW DRYER...
UPDATE: COAST GUARD TO ASSIST RESCUE SHIPS STUCK IN ANTARCTIC ICE...
'Thousands of trees will have to be planted to offset carbon footprint'...
Arctic birds seen in Florida...
Canada Startled by 'Frost Quakes'...

By this standard, I've spent 3 million dollars at Amazon.com

I like to go to Amazon, EBay, and other sites and fill my shopping cart with things that would be great to own. 
I rarely pull the trigger on a purchase. 
I have a somewhat addictive personality and if I ever start bringing stuff into the house from the intertubes I'll go broke.  Quickly. 

It looks like Obamacare shoppers do the same thing.  They make it through the website hurdles and find a policy that, if purchased, will keep them from being fined by the IRS.  They put it in their online shopping cart. 

And then they go to Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist, and Big Mama's House O' Midget Lesbian Porn and do the same thing without ever finalizing any sales. 

Here's Allahpundit:

 Obamacare administrators are counting people who've browsed the website and placed a plan in their virtual shopping cart -- but who never finished the process by checking out -- as "enrolled." That's a bogus metric. 

So what percentage of people have actually paid money to a real live Obama partner in this scam insurance company?

“There is also a lot of worrying going on over people making payments,” industry consultant Robert Laszewski wrote in an email. “One client reports only 15% have paid so far. It is still too early to know for sure what this means but we should expect some enrollment slippage come the payment due date.” Another consultant Kip Piper, agreed. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5% and 10% of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” he wrote me. “It naturally varies by insurer and will hopefully increase as we get close to end of December and documents flow in the mail,” added Piper, a former official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “But overall I’m hearing it’s a small portion so far. And that, of course, is a fraction of an already comparatively small number of people who have made it through setting up an account, getting verified, subsidy eligibility determined, plan selected, complete and correct data transferred to the insurer, and insurer set out the confirmation with invoice for consumer’s share of the first month’s premium.”

Let's assume that getting an account set up and throwing a plan into your online shopping cart has been easy.  (It hasn't.) 
Let's assume that effectively transferring your choice and your money (safely) to the corporate cronies insurance companies will be the hard part.  (It is.) 

Since the website has been a disaster, unfortunate people are going to be showing up at hospitals with nothing but a website I.D. number. The insurance companies will have no record of them.  The patient will say "Hey, I paid.  I signed up."  Some will be lying, of course.  Sometimes the insurance companies will lie. 

But this thing is so screwed up, it's going to take decades, and squadrons of lawyers, and billions of dollars to sort it out. 

This man could f*** up a two-car funeral.  (If you are in Britain, please translate that to mean "this man couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery".) 

 

Canada has a lottery to determine who gets to see the local doctor

Here's some good stuff about Canada's healthcare system, and I can't believe that Republicans didn't make more of it during the ObamaCare enactment tragedy of several years ago. 

All of the "civilized" nations have universal healthcare, right? 

It seems that Canada has a doctor shortage.  Canada's healthcare system is run by the government. 

To quote the great Milton Friedman,  "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand."  That probably applies on both sides of the U.S. northern border. 

There are places in Canada that have a freakin' lottery to determine who gets to have a family doctor. 

There are places in Canada that have a freakin' lottery to determine who gets to have a family doctor.

There are places in Canada that have a freakin' lottery to determine who gets to have a family doctor.

There are places in Canada that have a freakin' lottery to determine who gets to have a family doctor.

Ok, that's out of my system.  Why a lottery?

As of 2007, there were 12,000 Canadian docs practicing in the USA. 

In 2006, 1 in 9 Canadian-educated physicians practised in the United States. If physicians who were born in the United States are excluded, this number is reduced to 1 in 12. This accounts for just over half of the net loss of physicians from the Canadian-trained physician workforce. Collectively, this is equivalent to having 2 average-sized Canadian medical schools dedicated to producing physicians for the United States. Canada is the second largest source of immigrant physicians to the United States, second only to India.

People go where they can get a better return for their labor.  Doctors do it, I do it, and you do it. 

No one smart enough to get through medical school wants to be at the mercy of some charismatic, photogenic idiot who managed to get elected by claiming that a doctor's time and labor is a basic human right. 

So Canada now has a doctor shortage, especially in rural areas.  So do they turn healthcare over to the free market? 

No.  That wouldn't be "fair". 

Do they open more medical schools and train more doctors?  Do they allow nurses to handle more of the medical treatment load (which every nurse I've ever known claims that she could do....)? 

No.  That would be giving up central control. 

Canada has a lottery to see who gets a family doctor. 



Within 20 years, the USA will have a lottery system for family doctors. 

Enjoy the decline! 

A warning about user privacy on ObamaCare

I saw this on Denny's site:

 

Samizdata quote of the day

The quote of the day comes from someone named Mr. Ed, commenting on the Samizdata website. 

The whole purpose of politics and hence of government is to reward failure, if people succeed and prosper, the they don’t need government. Politicians* promise unearned rewards, and the more vicious ones promise to penalise success. Some set out to penalise success and promise reward to those who set them on their way.

*We know that there are exceptions, more common than vegetarian hyenas.

Hard to say it any better than that. 

 

Just wait til they're shuttling you between Doctors and Specialists !

The latest Catch-22 buried within Barack Obama's wretched Healthcare plan. 

Folks, this bunch hasn't been involved a single Dr. visit yet.  That's when it'll get really interesting. 

(For readers in the U.K. and China, Barack Obama's Healthcare.gov website has more timeouts than a 6-year-old's basketball game.  They've put in a stopgap 1-800 "no charge" telephone service until the website is running.) 

Hope.  Change. 

 

Schadenfreude - Fun Quotes On A Miserable Failure

Here are a few of Politico's best quotes on the ObamaCare website.  Go here for the complete collection.  (And BTW, I love the "snipping tool" for photos that comes with the Windows 7 package.)

And here's my favorite, and I don't know where I found it. 
They no longer have the "countdown to deadline" feature on the site, do they?  LOL. 

 

Another Failure For Fascism

Every now and then one is assured that yes, there is a God, and yes, she distributes Justice. 
One such moment occurred yesterday at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius showed up with about 20 government techno-munchkins to give a seminar on the total freakin' awesomeness of ObamaCare and its website. 

Sebelius and Steelers (Pittsburgh's pro football team) Chairman Dan Rooney were at an enrollment and education event on Thursday at Heinz Field to promote Healthcare.gov, but people who showed up encountered problems in signing up for coverage on the website.

Unable to handle heavy online traffic and riddled with technical glitches, the website has been a source of criticism of the Obama administration and the new Affordable Care Act since its start on Oct. 1.

Sebelius, who is making similar trips to cities across the country to spread the word about the website, told the audience of about 100 people that Healthcare.gov was “open for business.”

“Believe me, we had some early glitches,” said Sebelius, who was introduced by Rooney, a backer of the law. “But it's getting better every day.”

At the back of the room, it was a different story. About 20 people armed with laptops and certified by the government to sign up people for coverage were meeting with uninsured people, answering questions and fruitlessly trying to access the website.

LaKesha Lowry, 41, came to the event to find out about her health insurance options. But the North Side resident said she was not able to access the site, even with the help of a certified application counselor.

“It said, ‘Try again later,' ” Lowry said.

I'm sure there are folks who don't understand why Libertarians rejoice at the total miserable failure of ObamaCare. 
Let me put it this way.  We rejoiced when the Berlin Wall fell.  Many of us were downright giddy when Pol Pot was arrested.  I intend to host a Tarrant County Libertarian Meetup/Party on the night of Fidel Castro's funeral. 
People who forcibly intervene in the lives and choices of adults do more harm than good.  When they fail, society benefits.  It really is that simple. 

I was hoping I could post Sibelius's travel and seminar schedule here, but can't find it online due to the government shutdown.  (Which brings up the following question:  Why is this twit still flying around the countryside promoting failed websites if the government is supposed to be shut down?) 

And I was hoping to find a funny photoshop of Sibelius to close this post.  I failed.  I did find these incredible ObamaCare postage stamps from the staff and readers of The People's Cube. 

  Isn't it strange how they've removed the countdown widget from the website error message? 

We're in the best of hands. 

What happens when you ignore the Libertarian Party's Economic Platform?

Here's part of the preamble to the Libertarian Party's Economic Platform. 

The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are improper in a free society. 

 Back in 2008, the voters put in a president and a congress who didn't believe in those simple principles.  Or, to put it more accurately, Obama and congress wanted to back a few trailers up to The Treasury and start hauling off some loot.

They used Keynesian economic theories to justify their spending, wasting, thieving and stimulating.  They would have been just as happy to use the hidden messages in the inspirational poetry of Helen Steiner Rice.  (Seriously.... I don't believe anyone in government truly believes in Keynesian economics.  It's a convenient moral cover for giveaways to supporters.) 

We were supposedly on the edge of a cliff back in 2008. 
Certain institutions were declared "too big to fail" and got massive bailouts. 
Quasi-government entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which had been pumping billions into the housing market because (hell, who knows?) suddenly had no more chips to cash in. 
We received a massive, record-setting stimulus package.  It was the largest experiment in Keynesian Pork ever attempted. 
We paid people to destroy their cars and gave them credit for new ones. 
Ben Bernanke and Timmy "Tax Dodger" Geithner started pumping another $63,000,000,000.00 per month into the cash supply, and The Fed is still doing it. 
They had to do this because of "what we inherited". 
Hell, what we inherited looks pretty good compared to where we are now. 
Here you go.  This is from the notorious Tea Party rag, The Washington Post. 

Since Obama’s first full month in office in February 2009, the unemployment rate has gone from terrible (8.3 percent) to very bad (7.5 percent). But a true picture of just how bad the unemployment situation is in our country is revealed by the fact that more than 9.5 million people have dropped out of the labor force since the president took office in 2009. Undoubtedly, the impact of this number is reflected in some of the other indices and statistics that we can use to objectively measure the success of the Obama presidency.

In the past five years, 9.5 million people have quit working and the current labor force participation rate is just 63.6 percent, the lowest it’s been since May 1979. More than 15.2 million more people are on food stamps today than were in February 2009, and during the same time frame, the poverty rate has increased by 0.7 percent.

Gasoline prices have almost doubled under Obama, and there’s nothing more corrosive for the middle class than when more cash comes out of everyone’s pockets at the pump. This is especially true given that the median household income has dropped more than $3,000 during the Obama presidency.

All the while we have experienced the biggest jump in our national debt in history under Obama, with the debt exploding from $11 trillion at the end of 2008 to almost $17 trillion today. And I’ll point out once again that if we look at this huge number in more relatable terms, our current national debt translates to a cost of more than $148,000 per taxpayer, up from just over $90,000 per taxpayer in 2008.

Even the infamous “Misery Index,” created by Jimmy Carter, has gotten worse under the Obama presidency. Remember, the Misery Index is the unemployment rate plus the inflation rate. In January 2009, the index was 7.83, but as of March 2013, it increased to 9.07.

It’s safe to say that the above statistics are key benchmarks of the U.S. economy. You can pick through other available figures and try to find some small pieces of good news, but by any measure, what these data show is that things have gotten worse rather than better for many Americans during Obama’s tenure.

 Well, the Washington Post should've mentioned who has done well under The Coming Of The Obamassiah, just to be fair.  Here's Investor's Business Daily: 

Using Census data on net worth, the Pew report found that from 2009 to 2011, the richest 7% of Americans saw their net worth climb an average $697,651 — equal to a 28% gain.

The rest of the country saw their net worth drop an average $6,079 — equal to a 4% loss.

As a result, far from making the country more equal, Obama's policies have produced a greater concentration of wealth, with the share of wealth held by the top 7% rising to 63% in 2011, up from 56% in 2009, Pew found.

As I've noted before on these pages, if you look at the top 1% of wealthy counties in the U.S., half of them are the 13 or so surrounding Washington D.C.  The government spend more than $60,000.00 per poor family on anti-poverty programs.  Somehow, I think a lot of money gets sent to D.C. and stays in D.C.   

So, in summary....

The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are improper in a free society.

One day, one year, the glass will be half-full

Marvel Variants stopped scamming comic book collectors long enough to send me this helpful chart. 
It shows the "recovery" projections done each year by the Congressional Budget Office. 

If we just keep pulling money out of the productive part of the economy and putting it into the unproductive part, the economy will eventually take off.....

Right? 

Anybody?  Yes?  Dr. Krugman? 

Barack Obama has received our petition to secede

All of the post-election secession talk that's been going around disturbs me. 
We've got a great constitution in the U.S.  It's the greatest idea for a country ever, an idea the could be summed up as "leave everyone alone". 
We just need government to stick to the limits of the constitution, get the spending under control, and we really, really could come out of this mess intact. 
(Unfortunately, we now have to come up with $16,000,000,000,000.00 before we rise back up to the debt level of a homeless wino.  It could happen...?) 

A Statist with time on her hands (Dianne Self Wing?) recently composed this satire of a "Goodbye Letter" from Barack Obama to the Great State Of Texas. 

Rather than being funny, it's a terrifying glimpse into the mind of a Nanny State victim.

 
1)  All military bases in Texas will be closed.... 
You promise?  We won't have to pay for any more bloated military???  No standing army/navy/air force/marine groups going off to kill babies in the Middle East?  We could keep an army about the size of, say, Brazil's and do just fine.  More money in our pockets instead of Lockheed's. 

2)  They're going to revoke our passports. 
We'll have to get a passport if we want to see Texas A&M play a Southeast Conference "away" game, or visit a debt-laden Blue State.  Yawn. 

3)  The Feds are going to revoke our highway and infrastructure funding. 
Wait, let me rephrase that....  We won't have to send money to Washington, let them take a huge cut off the top, and then get a little bit of it back.  I don't see a downside yet, do you? 

4)  The FAA will no longer exist. 
Good.  They've had major problems with Air Traffic Controllers sleeping in the towers.  Canada privatized their Air Traffic Control system and hasn't had that problem.  So far, so good. 

5)  The FCC will no longer be able to grant regional monopolies to Clear Channel. 

6)  Anyone receiving payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Disability will have to re-apply. 
There is no longer such a thing as Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.  In a real world accounting system, they're bankrupt.  There's nothing there.  It's been spent.  Disability payments are another story.  These suddenly skyrocketed during Obama's 3rd year, and at one point the number of people filing for disability payments exceeded the number of people who found jobs.  This will be a good opportunity for Texas to determine who is really disabled, right? 

7)  Goodbye to the U.S. Coast Guard. 
Well, we don't fear drug smugglers in Texas.  More and more of us favor legalization.  Plus, if we're no longer going to be associated with Barack's Brigades who are going around the world blowing up other people's stuff, the need for a massive Navy/Coast Guard is going to drop off.  This'll be a good break for Texas.  But I suspect we'll have to put a border fence between ourselves and Oklahoma.  And Louisiana.  And New Mexico.   

8)  Thanks for giving us an opportunity to start paying the national debt now, instead of decades from now. 

Can you believe that this is the best someone could do?  There are so many great, great things about being associated with the USA.  But all that Dianne Self Wing could list were armies, busted programs, bureaucracies, and debts.  In other words, the Bush/Obama legacy.   

Kinda sad.