Gore’s Dire Global Warming Predictions?: Satellite Data Shows Arctic Sea Ice Coverage up 50 Percent!

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Pauline Askin

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Pauline Askin

It was only five years ago in December that Al Gore claimed that the polar ice caps would be completely melted by now. But he might be surprised to find out that Arctic ice coverage is up 50 percent this year from 2012 levels.

“Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore said in 2008.

The North Pole is still there, and growing. BBC News reports that data from Europe’s Cryosat spacecraft shows that Arctic sea ice coverage was nearly 9,000 cubic kilometers (2,100 cubic miles) by the end of this year’s melting season, up from about 6,000 cubic kilometers (1,400 cubic miles) during the same time last year.

This came as a shock to researchers who saw Arctic sea ice coverage shrink to a documented low in 2012. However, now sea ice coverage has expanded to reach the sixth record low, according to AFP.

“We didn’t expect the greater ice extent left at the end of this summer’s melt to be reflected in the volume,” said Rachel Tilling of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling in a statement. “But it has been, and the reason is related to the amount of multi-year ice in the Arctic.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Marine Facing Discharge for Sending Unsecured Threat Warning Email To Fellow Marines Garners Capitol Hill Defenders

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: BREZLER FAMILY

Photo Credit: BREZLER FAMILY

A Marine facing military discharge for mistakenly sending a threat warning from an unclassified email account garnered high-level support ahead of a military hearing that began Tuesday, with several members of Congress leaping to his defense.

Maj. Jason Brezler, a Marine Corps reservist and New York City fire fighter was facing a board of inquiry — the equivalent of an administrative hearing in the military — for warning his fellow Marines of an insider threat in August 2012.

He had tried to warn about an Afghan police chief — known to be linked to the Taliban, and also a child predator. Brezler’s warning was ultimately ignored, and three Marines were killed by one of the Afghan police chief’s alleged child victims.

The Marine reservist, though, now stands accused of passing classified information through unclassified channels because he allegedly used an improper email account to pass on the warning.

“It really does seem to be a witch hunt,” said Kevin Carroll, an attorney working on Brezler’s case.

Read more from this story HERE.

Tom Coburn ‘Wastebook’: $125K 3D Pizza

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn released his annual “Wastebook” on Tuesday, outlining 100 examples of what he calls egregious federal spending totaling $30 billion. From defense equipment to the downright bizarre, the Oklahoma senator highlights it all in his latest report. He started the reports in 2010. Here is a list of the top 10 most eyebrow-raising expenditures:

1. $125,000 3-D pizza: NASA gave a $124,955 grant to Arjun Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a small company hoping to build a 3-D pizza printer as part of space-exploration mission supplies. However, NASA scientists say the research will take time, and it could be years before the technology becomes feasible.

2. $914,000 to research Team Edward: The Popular Romance Project has received $914,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities since 2010, Coburn says. The project is expanding its website, which provides research into the origins of romance and its depiction in popular culture, including novels, Internet fan fiction and advice books. Coburn notes that the website currently provides analysis into the pop hit “Call Me Maybe” and the debate over fictional characters from “Twilight,” the young-adult series.

3. $17.5 million in brothel tax exemptions: Coburn says that through the tax code, $17.5 million has gone to brothels in Nevada that have claimed tax exemptions for everything from breast implants to “free passes” that were deemed part of promotional costs and eligible for deductions by the IRS.

4. $50 million “Google searches”: Coburn attributes $50 million to National Technical Information Services, an agency that charges for reports that often can be found for free through a Google search. Coburn calls NTIS, which is part of the Department of Commerce, antiquated, as it was created at a time when information wasn’t as readily available. He noted that about 74 percent of its reports had information available in public sources. Additionally, a CD-ROM for which the agency charges $79 contains information that is also available for free on the Internet.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boston Bomber Told Others He Was Acting Under “Majestic Mind Control”

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Barcroft Media

Photo Credit: Barcroft Media

Slain suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev said he heard voices in his head and believed in the concept of influencing others by way of “majestic mind control,” according to a new report.

Journalists at The Boston Globe published this weekend the result of a five-month investigation into the Tsarnaev family, and their report reveals new, never-before-released information about the 26-year-old Chechen boxer who, along with his younger brother Dzhokhar, is accused of orchestrating a terror attack at last April’s Boston Marathon race which killed three and left hundreds injured.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died during a shootout with police days after the event, and his brother is currently awaiting trial in federal court in Massachusetts. With the high-profile terrorist case likely a long way from being settled, little attention has been paid to the story in the months since the dust cleared after the event.

Sally Jacobs, David Filipov, and Patricia Wen of the Globe have spent nearly half a year probing the Tsarnaevs’ past, and with their latest report they raise new questions about the brothers – particularly regarding the mental state of the supposed mastermind, Tamerlan.

“He believed in majestic mind control, which is a way of breaking down a person and creating an alternative personality with which they must coexist,” Donald Larking, a 67-year-old man who attended a Boston mosque with the older brother, told the Globe.

“The full article is from RT News, a website with apparent connections to the Russian government. However, the source material for this article is from the Boston Globe.”

Read more from this story HERE.

5 Things You CAN’T Keep Under Obamacare

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

By Ashe Schowe.

President Obama’s pledge that those who liked their health care plans could keep them wasn’t the only broken promise made when selling the health care law. The troubled rollout of Obamacare has produced a growing list of things that Americans like about their current health care experience that they may not be able to keep. Below are five examples.

1. Health insurance plans

Millions of Americans have received notices canceling their existing health plans because they did not meet the requirements of the health care law, which forced insurers to include one-size-fits-all benefit packages in all plans.

In theory, Obamacare was supposed to allow Americans to keep their plans so long as those plans weren’t acquired after March 2010, when the law’s requirements took effect. These were the “grandfathered” plans of which Obama spoke.

But on June 17, 2010, three months after Obamacare was signed into law, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation detailing a number of modest alterations that would cause plans to lose their grandfathered status, thus subjecting them to the new rules.

This is what led to many of the more than 4 million cancellation letters Americans have received across the country.

Read more from this story HERE.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Why Signing Up For Obamacare With Healthcare.gov is Still a Security Risk

By Terence Grado.

As if the fumbled rollout of healthcare.gov wasn’t enough, it turns out that the site is also extremely susceptible to security breaches. At a recent congressional hearing over the health care law’s rollout, we found out that it could take a year to properly secure users’ personal information from potential theft.

David Kennedy, head of computer-security consulting company TrustedSec LLC, testified to Congress, saying, “There are actual, live vulnerabilities on the site now,” and that “when you develop a website, you develop it with security in mind. And it doesn’t appear to have happened this time.” In fact, the concern is so prevalent that when Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) asked Kennedy and two other cyber security experts if the site should be shut down until these issues were fixed, each replied “yes.”

These testimonies were provided just before the Department of Health and Human Services released a progress report highlighting the fixing of over 400 bugs and software improvements. However, the report never addressed any of the website’s security flaws.

Kennedy, who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon after the report was released, was still frustrated with their lack of focus on cyber security.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fed Judge Finds NSA Phone Surveillance Program Likely Unconstitutional Violation of 4th Amendment

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks.

Acting on a lawsuit brought by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, Leon issued a preliminary injunction barring the NSA from collecting so-called metadata pertaining to the Verizon accounts of Klayman and one of his clients. However, the judge stayed the order to allow for an appeal.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,” wrote Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

The preliminary injunction Leon granted Monday does not require him to make a definitive ruling on the constitutional questions in the case, but does take account of which side he believes is more likely to prevail.

Read more from this story HERE.

ObamaCare’s Troubles Are Only Beginning

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Bloomberg News

Photo Credit: Bloomberg News

The White House is claiming that the Healthcare.gov website is mostly fixed, that the millions of Americans whose health plans were canceled thanks to government rules may be able to keep them for another year, and that in any event these people will get better plans through ObamaCare exchanges. Whatever the truth of these assertions, those who expect better days ahead for the Affordable Care Act are in for a rude awakening. The shocks—economic and political—will get much worse next year and beyond. Here’s why:

The “sticker shock” that many buyers of new, ACA-compliant health plans have experienced—with premiums 30% higher, or more, than their previous coverage—has only begun. The costs borne by individuals will be even more obvious next year as more people start having to pay higher deductibles and copays.

If, as many predict, too few healthy young people sign up for insurance that is overpriced in order to subsidize older, sicker people, the insurance market will unravel in a “death spiral” of ever-higher premiums and fewer signups. The government, through taxpayer-funded “risk corridors,” is on the hook for billions of dollars of potential insurance-company losses. This will be about as politically popular as bank bailouts.

The “I can’t keep my doctor” shock will also hit more and more people in coming months. To keep prices to consumers as low as possible—given cost pressures generated by the government’s rules, controls and coverage mandates—insurance companies in many cases are offering plans that have very restrictive networks, with lower-cost providers that exclude some of the best physicians and hospitals.

Next year, millions must choose among unfamiliar physicians and hospitals, or paying more for preferred providers who are not part of their insurance network. Some health outcomes will deteriorate from a less familiar doctor-patient relationship.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Senator’s Wife–a Former Software Consultant–Experiences ‘Fiasco’ Trying to Use Obamacare Website (+video)

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

When it comes to Obamacare, “many members of Congress are feeling the very same pain that the rest of America is feeling,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) told Americans in a radio address on Saturday.

Toomey said he, his wife, and three children are among those “forced” to buy government-mandated health insurance on one of the new exchanges, and last week, his wife tried to sign up the family on an Obamacare exchange website.

“Now, my wife is a very sharp woman. She’s a former computer software consultant,” Toomey said. After entering the family’s personal information, the website wouldn’t let her browse the various plans. “When she called someone and asked for help, she was told the system just wasn’t working right now and it was best to try again later.”

According to Toomey, “The fiasco my wife just faced with the health care website is being experienced by Americans across the country when they try to sign up for health insurance. If this were just a matter of a slow-moving computer glitch, well, then maybe that would be excusable, but it’s much more than that.

“It’s been reported that perhaps as many as one third of those who have been able to complete the online enrollment process might not actually have insurance coverage at all. Apparently, the enrollment information isn’t always being transmitted to the insurers…Can you imagine going to your doctor or to a hospital in January only to find out you’re not actually insured?”

Read more from this story HERE.

Rep. Trey Gowdy Rips Obama for Acting Like Tyrant (+video)

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A member of Congress is now warning that Obama’s imperial presidency – his arbitrary enforcement or non-enforcement of the nation’s laws – has gone too far. And so he’s endorsing a resolution in the U.S. House that would allow a lawsuit over Obama’s decisions to abrogate laws passed by Congress.

“Assume that a statute said you had to provide two forms of ID to vote. Can the president require three forms? Can the president require one form? Can you suspend all requirements? If not, why not?” said Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in an interview on Fox News.

“If you can turn off certain categories of law, do you not also have the power to turn off all categories of law?”

He said Obama’s actions have reached “an unprecedented level, and we’ve got to do something about it.”

Gowdy cited Obama’s decisions to ignore certain immigration laws, even though Congress did not approve the changes. And Obama’s decisions to change the Obamacare law as he goes along. And his decision to make “recess appointments” even though the U.S. Senate was not in recess.

Read more from this story HERE.

Global Warming Climate Alarmists’ Search for Proof Growing Cold

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: MCT ILLUSTRATION

Photo Credit: MCT ILLUSTRATION

Recall global warming hysteria’s halcyon days? Just 13 years ago, Dr. David Viner, senior scientist at Britain’s University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit, confidently predicted that, within a few years, winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event.”

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

Of course, that doesn’t mesh with what happened. This past October, the UK Express headlined, “Worst winter for decades: Record-breaking snow predicted for November.”

By the end of November, Brits were shivering, “as Britain faces snow, ice and plummeting temperatures,” reported the Mirror newspaper. “Most of Scotland has been issued severe weather warnings for ice, and temperatures are expected to remain low, causing problems with snow and ice across the country.” Winter yet lay ahead.

We shouldn’t pick on Great Britain. There is plenty of global warming foolishness here at home. Recall James Hansen, global warming guru whose alarmist campaign was underwritten by his NASA paycheck. By the 2020s, Hansen predicted in 1986, the U.S. average annual temperature would rise 9 degrees Fahrenheit, or more, and up to 3 degrees by the 2010s.

Read more from this story HERE.