There were more than eight, though.
[Update a few minutes later]
Why is the ObamaCare roll out failing? Because Obama and his lackeys hate government.
Isn’t it obvious?
The IRS Tea Party (Phony) Scandal
Barack Obama’s fingerprints are all over it:
One grows weary of stating the obvious, but if President Bush had declared a specific category of citizen groups a “threat to democracy” potentially run by “political operatives” or “foreign-controlled,” and the IRS launched an unprecedented campaign of targeting and intrusive questioning, the mainstream media would have been relentless not only in its independent investigations but in its calls for accountability – at the highest levels.
Was the president of the United States involved in the IRS scandal? He was the one who identified the targets – in the most public manner possible.
This is called “circumstantial evidence.” People are convicted on circumstantial evidence every day.
The Article VI Problem
Copenhagen Suborbitals has discovered it.
At ISPCS last week, I was talking to another space lawyer about the need to deal with this, sooner than later (though Planetary Resources and other mining companies don’t seem to understand the problem). As I noted in the conclusion to my property-rights piece in The New Atlantis last year, The words “continuing supervision” open us up to all manner of mischief:
it is worth noting that, while the OST arguably does not prevent the recognition of property claims per se, it may prove to be a hindrance to any kind at all of large-scale space activity, not just settlement. In that regard, this is the most troublesome sentence in the entire treaty: “The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty.”
Consider the implications of the words “continuing supervision,” if taken literally. It could be argued that satisfaction of this requirement would demand that any person operating off the planet would be required to have a government minder with him at all times. Prior approval — for example, a launch license — might not be sufficient, because supervision could be argued to imply not just observation, but physical control. This wording in the treaty could imply that even the remote monitoring of private activity in space, which itself would be a significant hindrance for space settlement, would be insufficient.
With new affordable spaceflight technologies on the horizon, extensive private activity in space will be a serious possibility in the near future. If we wish to see humanity flourish in space, we have to recognize that the Outer Space Treaty is a relic of a different era. Fresh interpretations may not suffice: we may soon have to renegotiate and amend the treaty — or even completely scrap it and start from scratch — if we want not just to protect space as a mere scientific preserve but to open it for settlement as a grand new frontier. [Emphasis added]
I think my next project may be called “The Article VI Project.”
Life On A Superdense Asteroid
Making Progress On HealthCare.Gov
They seem to have updated the web site to reduce frustration. The fun begins when you click on “Apply Now.”
“The End Of Barack Obama”?
That’s the subject of a lot of spam email I’ve been getting lately. The spammers must think it’s a popular topic. 😉
On The Road Again
Heading back down to LA. Traffic in the Bay area is a mess as a result of the BART strike, but we’ll be heading east, and it shouldn’t affect us. We’ll be back there this evening.
Teaching History
It isn’t happening:
Questioner: What was the Holocaust?
American College Student: Um…I’m on the spot.Questioner: Which country was Adolf Hitler the leader of?
American College Student: I think it’s Amsterdam?Questioner: What was Auschwitz?
American College Student: I don’t know.Questioner: What were the Nuremburg Trials?
American College Student: I don’t know.Questioner: How many Jews were killed?
American College Student: Hundreds of thousands.
We’re doomed.
“A Crock Of S**t”
That’s how a fellow warm monger describes Michael Mann’s latest papers.
ObamaCare’s Million-Dollar Question
It’s actually a trillion-dollar question: Will enough young people sign up?
There’s another self-inflicted wound that could prove fatal. Since the ACA allows young people to stay on their parents’ health plans until they turn 26, the law dramatically shrinks the pool of healthy young customers whose overpayments on insurance are supposed to subsidize the middle aged beneficiaries of the law.
…All told, we wonder if Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President Obama are as happy today about Obamacare as they were on the day the law was passed. Beyond that, everything that has happened since passage has confirmed our view that far from solving the problems facing American health care, this poorly drafted, poorly executed system makes the problem of health care reform both more urgent and more difficult.
One of the myriad idiocies about the law is that they let people stay on their parents’ plans until they’re twenty six. Why did these morons imagine that those people that they needed to sign up for their own insurance would do so? It was just part of an incoherent grab bag of goodies they stuffed into the bill to try to sell it to low-infos.
[Update a while later]
Don’t worry, GOP. ObamaCare will defund itself:
With only a small penalty for abstaining, the numbers for signing up not only don’t add up — they’re absurd. Here’s one of the supposedly attractive deals: “One option available only to people under 30 is a so-called catastrophic policy that kicks in after a $6,350 annual deductible. In Monroe County, you can buy that policy on the New York State of Health exchange for as low as $131 a month for single coverage.”
Over fifteen hundred a year for a sixty-three hundred plus deductible? What healthy thirty year old would waste his or her money?
Who invented this plan? Certainly not Obama or Pelosi, neither of whom was paying close attention, I would bet. (Pelosi admitted she wasn’t. All Obama wanted was something to put his name next to, something that sounded vaguely “progressive.”)
Neither Obama or Pelosi is smart enough to even understand the problem.