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Once provisions of the Affordable Care Act start to kick in during 2014, at least three of every 10 employers will probably stop offering health coverage, a survey released Monday shows.

While only 7% of employees will be forced to switch to subsidized-exchange programs, at least 30% of companies say they will “definitely or probably” stop offering employer-sponsored coverage, according to the study published in McKinsey Quarterly.

Indeed. Why should they offer coverage when they can throw it on the taxpayers?

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The group, known as Patriotic Millionaires, regards the reductions signed into law by PresidentGeorge W. Bush as “one of the worst decisions that members of both parties have made in the last 50 years,” according to Erica Payne, founder of the Agenda Project, a public-policy group that is helping to organize the effort. “Increasing taxes on millionaires has to be part of the solution to how we get our fiscal house in order.”

All a lie, of course. They don’t want their taxes to increase, they want to increase the taxes of everybody else. Notice how these ‘rich people for more taxes’ groups never have anybody who voluntarily makes payments to the Treasury, which they could easily do; they just make noise about increasing taxes.

An Informative Comic

Read it. And watch the video.

In the continuing saga, in which Palin is being savaged and mocked, please listen to this NPR interview with Robert Allison, a professor and historian at Suffolk University, in which Allison argues that while Palin may have had some details wrong, she mostly was correct about Paul Revere’s ride, including the ringing of bells and firing of shots as warning to the British….

Just think what would have happened had she talked about visiting the same 57 states that Barack Obama visited before he became President.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Last week witnessed popular Muslim preacher Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini boast about how Islam allows Muslims to buy and sell conquered infidel women, so that “When I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”

This week’s depraved anachronism comes from a Muslim woman—Salwa al-Mutairi, a political activist and former parliamentary candidate for Kuwait’s government, no less: She, too, seeks to “revive the institution of sex-slavery.”

All perfectly proper under Islam, which has no problem with slavery whatsoever.

The Kuwaiti female activist begins by insisting that “it’s of course true” that “the prophet of Islam legitimized sex-slavery.” She recounts how when she was in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, she asked various sheikhs and muftis (learned, authoritative Muslims) about the legality of sex-slavery according to Sharia: they all confirmed it to be perfectly legal; Kuwaiti ulema further pointed out that extra “virile” men—Western synonymous include “sex-crazed,” “lecherous,” “perverted”—would do well to purchase sex-slaves to sate their appetites without sinning.

Your future under Islam. Don’t say that you weren’t warned.

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Gee, I wonder why?

The USPS has 571,566 full-time workers, making it the country’s second-largest civilian employer after Wal-Mart Stores. It has 31,871 post offices, more than the combined domestic retail outlets of Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and McDonald’s. Last year its revenues were $67 billion, and its expenses were even greater. Postal service executives proudly note that if it were a private company, it would be No. 29 on the Fortune 500.

No, if it were a private company, it would be long gone.

The problems of the USPS are just as big. It relies on first-class mail to fund most of its operations, but first-class mail volume is steadily declining — in 2005 it fell below junk mail for the first time. This was a significant milestone. The USPS needs three pieces of junk mail to replace the profit of a vanished stamp-bearing letter.

Well, perhaps if they raised the price of junk mail rather than lowering it, and lowered the price of first class mail rather than raising it every time they felt a pinch, things would be different. But I guess that’s not one of the famous vanishing ‘options’.

Since 2007 the USPS has been unable to cover its annual budget, 80 percent of which goes to salaries and benefits. In contrast, 43 percent of FedEx’s budget and 61 percent of United Parcel Service’s pay go to employee-related expenses. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the postal service’s two primary rivals are more nimble. According to SJ Consulting Group, the USPS has more than a 15 percent share of the American express and ground-shipping market. FedEx has 32 percent, UPS 53 percent.

Perhaps the USPS might, you know, take a look at those companies and see what might be learned from them. That’s what a private company would do.

This should be a moment for the country to ask some basic questions about its mail delivery system. Does it make sense for the postal service to charge the same amount to take a letter to Alaska that it does to carry it three city blocks? Should the USPS operate the world’s largest network of post offices when 80 percent of them lose money? And is there a way for the country to have a mail system that addresses the needs of consumers who use the Internet to correspond?

Prediction: Not one of these questions will be seriously addressed, especially by Congress.

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A joint resolve introduced by Rep. Beth O’Connor, of Berwick, won final Senate approval on Wednesday after winning House approval last week. Connor characterized corn ethanol as “a colossal waste” that’s subsidized by billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers.

Her criticisms include damage it can cause to small engines and its inflationary impact on food prices. She says it takes nearly twice as much energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than the ethanol itself yields.

Even blue states get the blues.

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After trying to cram a cold and hot aisle into a single container, which is a bit on the cramped side for human beings, HP has figured out that if you put two containers side-by-side and then open them up, you can run a hallway down the middle and use that as a shared hot aisle in roughly the same dimensions as in an actual brick and mortar data center. The 240 part of the product name refers to the fact that it is based on two 40-foot shipping containers, the kind that come from China to the United States and Europe is far larger numbers than go in the reverse direction.

You, too, can do your part for Global Warming.

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Just waiting for SkyNet to make its move….

Peter Suderman lays out some Inconvenient Truth.

The AP’s Q&A on the Obama administration’s 1,400 health care waivers, which exempt specific businesses and union organizations from certain provisions of the health care law, strongly implies that the waiver process is best understood as “a safety valve” designed to “prevent unintended consequences.” There is, however, an easier way to prevent such unintended consequences: Don’t pass laws that cause them in the first place.

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“Dig This” is a construction theme park developed by New Zealand-born Ed Mumm, who stumbled upon the idea while using a rented excavator to build his home in Steamboat Springs, Colo. After a couple of days of digging, he realized that operating machinery was a blast.

As indeed it is.

The 10-employee park has five pieces of machinery, including a pair of Caterpillar D5 track-type bulldozers and three Caterpillar 315CL hydraulic excavators. Dig This sells three-hour packages that consist of a 30-minute safety and operation orientation followed by two hours of maneuvering either a bulldozer or excavator.

Guests can either dig a trench up to 10 ft deep or build an earthen mound; there are also skill tests like picking and moving 2,000-lb tires or scooping basketballs from atop safety cones. ??Packages are priced at $400, which reflects equipment maintenance and insurance costs. Patrons 14 and older can play in the dirt.

Oh, I would so love to do this….

“Half of our customers are females, including housewives and grandmothers,” says company spokeswoman Cathy Wiedemer. “Throttling up a powerful engine and moving mounds of earth is very empowering.”

Read it.

What a wonderful world we live in, where people have the spare time and money to do this sort of thing.

Remember it.

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In all the news footage I’ve seen and every online account I’ve read of these events, the troublemakers—the ones throwing gang signs and roving in huge packs and attacking random strangers and often planning such mayhem on Twitter and Facebook—were somewhere in the ballpark of 99 to 100 percent black.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Just 162 years after history’s greatest gold rush, the state’s last remaining prospectors are about to have their way of life declared illegal, amid a long-running battle with salmon-loving environmentalists.

Forward into the past!

The report’s findings are due to come into force in six months. But a few weeks ago, opponents of dredging quietly succeeded in amending California’s proposed budget in a way that will extend the moratorium for at least the next five years – and perhaps for ever.

With the help of a Democratic state assemblyman, Jared Huffman, they had a paragraph in the document changed to prevent the Department of Fish and Game, which compiled the impact report, from spending any money reissuing dredging licences until 2017. And with no money to spend, there is no way to relegalise the practice.

This sort of surreptitious amendment of legislation is more common than you would think, and a rich target for corrupt legislators (and their staff members).

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The report prepared for the Association of Chief Police Officers by the Universities’ Police Science Institute at Cardiff University, found that 11 out of the 12 mosques it examined in London, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester have been targeted by extremist Islamist groups.

Welcome to Londonistan.

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The Rt. Rev. Brian Marsh, Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Church in America, has decided the ACA cannot accept Pope Benedict’s offer, via Anglicanorum Coetibus, of an ordinariate wherein Anglicans may be received into the Catholic Church but still preserve much of their worship tradition. The reason for rejection of this remarkable offer from the Pope, it seems, is His Grace’s horrifying discovery that when one is received into the Catholic Church one becomes (brace yourself) Catholic. Nobody told him, I guess.

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Last night, Kno quietly released its first digital textbook app for the iPad. It includes its own store of “over 70,000 titles at 30% to 50% off list” price. And the app is a full textbook reader.

Kno, whose CEO Osman Rashid previously founded textbook-rental service Chegg, originally developed its own oversized tablet for textbooks. But once the iPad and Android tablets hit the market, the company saw the writing on the touchscreen and bailed on its hardware efforts last April

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The German scientist discovered that by placing precious metals in acid he could create tiny ducts through corrosion. Once those channels are flooded with a conductive liquid, electrical currents can be used to harden the material and, if you change your mind about the brittle results, the effect can easily be reversed to make it soft again.

We have the technology.

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Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park.

‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’ — Benito Mussolini

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Ben Post works for Urban Homeworks, and sympathizes with Haege. But he said volunteers were given explicit directions to stay out of banned zones, so if Haege was in one, he was on his own.

“People were super ramped up to help, and frankly there wasn’t much to do,” he said. “The hard part is, I’m sure people were asking volunteers for help in those areas. But if we just released 600 people into the neighborhood, it would have been a nightmare.”

Well, it certainly would have been a nightmare for those who think that everything has to be done through the government. I guess we know where Ben Post sits.

‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’ — Benito Mussolini

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A year ago, a University of California, Irvine investigation found that the Muslim Student Union (MSU) devised a plot to silence a speech by Israel’s ambassador and then lied about it to school administrators.

Now that same school has honored that same student group with an award for demonstrating “commitment to transforming the structures of inequality and injustices through reflection and action.” The MSU won the school’s Cross Cultural Center’s Praxis Award at the Anteater Awards ceremony on May 18.

(Shouldn’t that be the ‘Kool-Aid Drinker Awards ceremony’? Let’s be accurate, here.)

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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A Canadian student has been suspended from school and had the police sicced on him due to satirical animations that he posted to YouTube.

Jack Christie, a 12th-grade student at the Donald A. Wilson Secondary School in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, created the videos in his own time, off-campus.

So why is the school getting involved? Why, because of the Thought Police, of course.

While we may find the animations entertaining, Durham District School Board spokeswoman Andrea Pidwerbecki was not amused. “If something is considered detrimental to the positive moral tone of the school, it doesn’t necessarily have to happen inside the school [for us to get involved],” she told The Globe and Mail of Toronto.

Thank God you don’t live in Canada.

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Supporters of ‘net neutrality’, like Free Press, think equal access to the internet is a “civil right” and that service providers should be prohibited from charging certain prices for certain speeds. When providers have this kind of control, they say, customers in weaker coverage areas get stuck with weaker service. Opponents of ‘net neutrality’ say that if service is regulated in this way then content will soon be regulated as well.

In April 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that the FCC did not have any authority to regulate the internet in this way, however the government agency voted to move forward with its ‘net neutrality’ program in December, just a few months later.

Listen to the courts? Nah, that’s for the Little People.

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I suppose, for some people, a pencil is just too proletarian.

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The tortured corpse of a prominent Pakistani journalist, who had told friends he feared that the country’s military intelligence agency would kill him, was found Tuesday, two days after he disappeared.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

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Yesterday Drudge linked to the New York Times story announcing the appointment of Jill Abramson to succeed Bill Keller as the top dog at the Times. I read the story and was amused by Abramson’s expression of delight: “In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”

No surprises here.

A funny thing happened on the way to shul, as we say in Yiddish. The Times has scrubbed the quote from the story.

Sadly, no surprises here, either.

Sometimes all the news that’s fit to print goes down the Memory Hole. C’est la vie.

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The Ministry’s website is still down as of this writing, and the servers are under Anonymous control. One of the Iranian members of Anonymous involved with the operation sent me a message from the compromised email servers as evidence that they were still under Anonymous control.

Curiouser and curiouser.

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Yesterday I noted that the Feds have inspectors looking for unlicensed rabbit sellers. It turns out that’s not all of the story.

I find that the rabbit police has at least 64 employees we could get rid of without losing much. They are now harassing stage magicians who have rabbits in their act. It would be legal to buy a rabbit, take it home, and feed it to a rattlesnake without a Federal permit; but if you use the rabbit in a show, you must have a Federal license, and there are Federal inspectors who scour the newspapers hoping to find the names of stage magicians who don’t have Federal rabbit licenses. I understand you probably think I am making this up.

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Ms. Abramson, 57, said that as a born-and-raised New Yorker, she considered being named editor of The Times to be like “ascending to Valhalla.”

“In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”

Well … that explains a lot.

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Sometimes it makes the Postal Service look competent.

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In Michael Goodwin’s column preceding his ground-breaking June 1 column that I posted yesterday, New York City teachers tell him that they are encouraged or required to pass 80 percent of their pupils, regardless of grades and attendance, though one teacher mentions a mandated pass rate of 60 percent. The school principals require these pass rates, because the alternative is to have the school closed by the federal Department of Education and for the administrators and teachers to lose their jobs. This is the result of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which forces “failing” schools to close by withdrawing federal funds from them, and which defines such “failing” in terms of pupils’ non-attainment of a prescribed improvement in their grades and test results.. This means that a school with a large number of low IQ pupils will automatically be classified as a “failing” school and must be closed. So the principals and teachers, simply in order to protect their livelihood, are forced to pass students who are actually failing or who are not even attending.

In other words, government employees can be counted on to commit fraud rather than jeopardize their own jobs. Nice to know.

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When Joshua Kaufman’s MacBook was stolen, he pursued the thief who took it by using the “Hidden” software he had installed on the laptop. It allowed him to check in and capture snapshots of the guy in possession of the computer, using the built-in iSight camera. Kaufman created a blog with pictures of the man in various states of undress and activity as he used the MacBook. It took more than two months, but Tuesday, the Oakland police finally arrested the suspected thief, a limo driver who they tricked into picking them up.

And people want the government in charge of our health care? I don’t think so.

Oakland Police Department’s media relations officer, Holly Joshi, told us that it was “human error” that delayed Kaufman’s case. She said that the theft investigations unit handles 2,400 reports a month amongst three investigators, and that somehow, Kaufman’s report had been erroneously filed rather than put in the second priority category, which assigns investigators for follow up when evidence is present.

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

Muthanna Aldebashi, 27, is charged with possession of stolen merchandise and is in jail on a $20,000 bail.

Obviously a fine, native-born American.

Steve Sailer leans on a famous ‘progressive’ blind spot.

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Amy Carter – After President Carter’s single term in office, Amy was heavily involved in political activism including various sit-ins. She was arrested during a protest at the University of Massachusetts in 1986. She attended Brown University where she was dismissed for academic reasons and then denied re-entry.

Apparently the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

The article deals with Carters, Reagans, and Bushes. I guess the Clinton and Kennedy kids were just too boring.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Read it.

The Great Recession has created a growing underclass of millions of unemployed who are unlikely to ever re-enter the labor force. Instead, they’re relying on government support that they qualify for because of health issues.

The real culprit: Workers with modest health problems are usually willing to take jobs when they can get them. But when they can’t, they turn to the government. That’s why the number of people who apply for — and get approved for — disability payments typically increases during bad economic times.

“There are people who, despite disability, are out there working when times are good,” said Mark Lassiter, spokesman for the Social Security Administration, which runs the disability programs.

Though the benefits are relatively modest — only about $1,000 a month — getting approved for disability can be a difficult process of appeals and hearings that typically lasts a year or more. Few who have qualified want to risk those benefits for a job that might not last.

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Stateside boffins say that, contrary to popular perception, it would often be better for the planet if people avoided using biodegradable products compliant with the recommended US government guidelines.

This is because biodegradable wastes – for instance cardboard cups, “eco friendly” disposable nappies, various kinds of shopping and rubbish bags etc – often wind up in landfill, where they will degrade and emit methane. Methane is, of course, a vastly more powerful greenhouse gas than CO₂, so it is seen as important to prevent it getting into the atmosphere.

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The special effects were great, the story was on the weak side. The conflict between Richard the Lionheart and King John from any old Robin Hood story, was mashed together with Transformers II and The Good Son, threw in La Femme Nikita for good measure, then they mounted it on the ledge from Tron: Legacy, laced it with some monsters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and let it fly.

Too bad it’s in ‘3D’, i.e. you pay extra and have to wear those shitty goggles to watch it.

Ever notice, lately, in these movies that star the puppy-face actors who were born sometime in the 1980’s — the men are all exotic European/Australian types, but the women are super-duper-Yankee-Americanized urban yuppie chicks? That certain voice inflection is really starting to wear on me, I must say. Julia Roberts, Monica Potter, Natalie Portman, Katie Holmes, Jessica Alba, Keira Knightley…they all have it. Just a little too polished and a little too flat. It’s got that “never stepped foot out of an urban metropolis with at least five million people living in it” sound to it.

He’s got that right.

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Huwaini actually made these scandalous assertions some eighteen years ago. But because they were only recently exposed, he was invited to “clarify” his position on Hikma TV last week. Amazingly, though he began by saying his words were “taken out of context,” he nonetheless reasserted, in even more blunt language, that Islam justifies plundering, enslaving, and raping the infidel. (Al Youm 7 has the entire interview, excerpts of which I translate below.)

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

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Apple software engineer Nirav Patel generates a key’s blueprint with the manufacturer’s lock code, which contains all the relevant bit dimensions. This information is fed into OpenSCAD, a program for creating solid objects, and finally churned out through his RepRap 3D printer.

Not sure I’m comfortable with that….