How Sarah Palin Made Adele a Star

‘The Stars Aligned’

. . . In a BBC interview, the British singer explained how she suddenly gained worldwide fame in 2008:

“The week I was doing Saturday Night Live, it was meant to be a normal week but the week after, Sarah Palin was supposed to do it, . . . Because something came up in the campaign, she came and did the week I was doing it with Josh Brolin. So it was one of the most watched SNLs ever, and then it was two weeks before the Grammy ballot, which is when people decide what songs they want to maybe nominate, so, like, literally the stars aligned for me. . . . All thanks to Sarah Palin.”

After Adele performed for that huge audience, her album hit number one and she was nominated for four Grammys. Sarah Palin recently sent Adele a copy of her new book, Sweet Freedom: A Devotional, penning this autographed inscription:

“Adele, You look so great! So beautiful! So . . . Rumor Has It you recently threw me some credit for your amazing success — very kind coming from Someone Like You! Congrats on motherhood. Keep Setting Fire to the Rain.
Love, your fan
Sarah Palin”

I think I've already posted every good "Rolling in the Deep Cover", but I can't remember if I posted this. It's little dated (I haven't seen anyone play 'Angry Birds' in a while):



Linked at Wombat-socho's special post-Thanksgiving food coma double-stuffed Rule 5 compendium "Rule 5 Sunday: Them Ain’t Turkeys, Them Are Ducks."

Red Sky at Night . . .

Sailors delight. A brief but brilliant sunset seen through our already orange oak trees.

Can the Redskins Defang the Panthers?

The 4-5 Washington Redskins about to meet the 9-0 Carolina Panthers at BOA Stadium in Charlotte, NC. Given their respective records it seems unlikely. But they had a great day last week against New Orleans, so who knows?

Panthers take the kickoff to the 40 yard line.

To be continued.

Panthers forced to punt. Good Start!

Darrell Green talks Redskins name, state of franchise

Q: What should the franchise do about the name and the complaints about it being racist?

Cousins throws an interception. Opps!

A: I’ve said on many occasions that my initial response was the owner didn’t want to have a dialogue and I said that wasn’t right. It deserves a conversation, a response, a discovery of the legitimacy of what is being challenged. I still maintain that. I have also been on record that I’m not throwing away anything that is Redskins that I played under that flag. But I think it’s fair and responsible to come to a clear conclusion to say this is right or this is wrong, and this is hurting people.

Touchdown,  Panthers at 9:56 in the first. Kick is good, 7-0 Panthers.

I have not seen their voice and their representation at a national level. I’ve seen people talk about it, but I have not seen anybody representing those people. Back in history, we had a face in Dr. King who had a message that needed to be responded too. … Nobody really knows what the issues are. If that comes, the Redskins are responsible to respond to that. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not throwing anything I have but I’ll support whatever decisions are made down the pike.

Obamacare Schadenfreude Out of Control

Acck! I've let it go too long again; time for a quick catch up.

Bombshell: United Healthcare may exit individual insurance exchanges after 2016

UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) today reported revised expectations for 2015, reflecting a continuing deterioration in individual exchange-compliant product performance, and provided an initial outlook for 2016.

“In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide, co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated, so we are taking this proactive step,” said Stephen J. Hemsley, chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group. “We continue to be pleased with the growth and overall performance of our Company outside of the individual exchange products and look forward to strong, positive and broad based earnings growth across our enterprise in 2016.” …

UnitedHealthcare has pulled back on its marketing efforts for individual exchange products in 2016. The Company is evaluating the viability of the insurance exchange product segment and will determine during the first half of 2016 to what extent it can continue to serve the public exchange markets in 2017.

Covered California: Hey, United Healthcare will expand in our markets

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt — it’s a government policy in California. After United Healthcare announced that it would not commit to remaining in individual health insurance markets — the ObamaCare exchanges — Covered California insisted that United didn’t mean they would exit all markets. California is different, they insisted:
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, said he spoke with UnitedHealth officials Thursday and remains confident about the company’s continued expansion in the state.

“We have every indication they are all in for 2016 and 2017,” Lee said in an interview. “The fact United did badly in other parts of the country, like many health plans did, is exactly why they want to be in California.”

UnitedHealthcare seems to have a different take on matters:

A spokesman for United Health said no decision has been made on its future participation in Covered California. “We will make an assessment of 2017 markets in the first quarter of 2016,” spokesman Tyler Mason said. …
UnitedHealth Chief Executive Stephen Hemsley told analysts and investors that “we cannot sustain these losses…. We can’t really subsidize a marketplace that doesn’t appear at the moment to be sustaining itself.”

Anything is possible, of course, but if United Healthcare considers California to be a different case, they certainly didn’t tell investors that. Their announcement yesterday didn’t relate to pulling out of a certain number of specific markets; they announced that they would consider pulling out of the individual-plan market altogether. If they planned to not just stay in California but expand in that market, why not say so? It might have kept their stock price a little higher yesterday.

The Slow-Motion Implosion of ObamaCare

In other words, ObamaCare expanded coverage in 2014 to the extent that it gave people free or nearly free insurance. That goal could have been accomplished without the Affordable Care Act. To justify its existence, ObamaCare must make affordable private insurance available to a broad cross-section of uninsured Americans who are ineligible for Medicaid.

But with fewer people buying insurance through the exchanges, the economics aren’t holding up. Ten of the 23 innovative health-insurance plans known as co-ops—established with $2.4 billion in ObamaCare loans—will be out of business by the end of 2015 because of weak balance sheets.

And while rates vary widely by state, the cost for private insurance through the exchanges is also increasing dramatically. An analysis by consulting firm Avalere Health released on Friday shows that some of the most popular insurance plans in the ObamaCare exchanges will experience double-digit premium hikes in 2016.

 Obamacare death spiral a gift to 2016 GOP candidates

It goes without saying that all the stuff President Obama said while selling Obamacare — that it would save the average family $2,500, that people who liked their coverage could keep it, etc. — have long ago gone up in smoke.

This is a potent political issue. Republican base voters have never gone along with the party's Beltway elites in making their peace with Obamacare. Any candidate who pledges on the stump to repeal every word of the Affordable Care Act wins a raucous round of applause. And in light of recent news, look for them to do it more and more.

ObamaCare Enrollment Flatlines As 6th Insurance Co-Op Fails

Amid massive premium increases, the administration says that ObamaCare enrollment will flatline next year. This news comes just as health insurance co-op No. 6 goes belly-up. The train wreck continues.

With less than a month to go before ObamaCare open enrollment starts, the Health and Human Services Department has massively downgraded how many it expects will sign up. In a report released Thursday, HHS said that enrollment will be between 9.4 million and 11.4 million by the end of next year.

In other words, enrollment will be about half what the Congressional Budget Office projected. And at the low end, it means that ObamaCare enrollment will have declined from where it was in March of this year, when HHS bragged that 10.2 million were covered.

Many Say High Deductibles Make Their Health Law Insurance All but Useless

. . . for many consumers, the sticker shock is coming not on the front end, when they purchase the plans, but on the back end when they get sick: sky-high deductibles that are leaving some newly insured feeling nearly as vulnerable as they were before they had coverage.

“The deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the doctor,” said David R. Reines, 60, of Jefferson Township, N.J., a former hardware salesman with chronic knee pain. “We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it.”

In many states, more than half the plans offered for sale through HealthCare.gov, the federal online marketplace, have a deductible of $3,000 or more, a New York Times review has found. Those deductibles are causing concern among Democrats — and some Republican detractors of the health law, who once pushed high-deductible health plans in the belief that consumers would be more cost-conscious if they had more of a financial stake or skin in the game.

Obamacare’s Bait and Switch Has Left Consumers Scrambling in 2016

Instead of “affordable care” promised by President Obama and Democrats, consumers have instead discovered they have effectively been forced to pay for catastrophic health insurance at comprehensive-plan prices. They have become victims of a bait-and-switch scheme that the government would vigorously prosecute – if it wasn’t masterminding the scheme itself. The consumers interviewed by Robert Pear in The New York Times figured out that they’ve been had.

“Basically I was paying for insurance I could not afford to use,” said one Texas man who decided to drop his coverage. Another 60-year-old New Jersey man told Pear, “We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it,” thanks to a $3,000 deductible on top of his premiums. One woman told Pear that she’d be better off saving the money from her premiums as a form of self-insurance against catastrophe – since Obamacare no longer allows for low-premium catastrophic coverage in most cases.

The ever sensible Megan McArdle: Deductibles Are the Price You Pay for Obamacare

. . .This is actually good insurance design. Insurance that covers routine expenses isn’t really insurance; it’s a sort of inefficiently expensive prepayment plan. If Obamacare forces people away from "first dollar" coverage with low or no deductible, and toward plans that cover people only for unanticipated emergencies, that would be a win for economic logic.

The problem with this is twofold: First, unless they’re pegged to income, high deductibles are regressive, forcing the poorest people to pay the largest share of their income. And second, people absolutely hate economically logical health-care plans. This is why you see unions giving up quite a lot of other concessions on wages and benefits in order to keep those gold-plated health-care plans.

The regressiveness of the deductibles is mitigated by Obamacare’s cost-sharing reduction subsidies, which limit your deductibles if you make less than 250 percent of the federal poverty line (about $60,000 for a family of four). But those subsidies are available only on Silver plans, which carry higher premiums. And economically strapped families often have trouble spending more money now to save money later.

Regardless of subsidies, the political problem remains: Insurance on the exchanges is quite expensive considering how high the deductibles are, and how limited the provider networks are. That’s making people unhappy, and seems likely to generate political pressure to make the policies more generous, which is to say, more expensive. 

And her next article: Obamacare Insurers Are Suffering. That Won't End Well.

What UnitedHealth’s action suggests is that the company is not sure it can make money in this market at any price. Executives seem to be worried about our old enemy, the adverse selection death spiral, where prices go up and healthier customers drop out, which pushes insurers' costs and customers' prices up further, until all you’ve got is a handful of very sick people and a huge number of very expensive claims.
. . .
But on the conference call, Stephen Helmsley, the CEO of UnitedHealth, expressed concerns that the exchanges were seeing adverse selection anyway. Not just that the Obamacare insurance pool is sicker and more expensive than expected, which we already knew. But that the pool is experiencing adverse selection over the course of the year, as healthy people stop paying their premiums, and sicker people buy in. According to Helmsley, the people who bought insurance from them through the exchange, but outside of the open enrollment period, are averaging about 20 percent more expensive than the rest of the pool.

This is potentially extremely bad news for Obamacare. It may be that UnitedHealth simply had an especially bad experience, but with more than 500,000 people covered, that doesn’t seem actuarially likely. Which raises the worrying possibility that only two years in, people have figured out how to game the special enrollment process so that it’s safe for them to go without insurance, and then sign up for coverage if they get sick. That’s not the only possible explanation. Perhaps people who have “qualifying life events” are simply more likely to buy insurance if they need a lot of health care. But we can’t dismiss the possibility of gaming, either -- or that healthier people are dropping insurance as they realize they won’t hit their deductible.

Merry Christmas from the Obama and the Democrats! Shopping for Health Insurance Is New Seasonal Stress for Many

“Every year I feel like I’m starting all over again, and I just dread it,” said Ms. Galen, 63, of Warrenton, Ore. “My stress level just shoots up.”

Over the past two years, the Affordable Care Act has created entirely new markets for health insurance, and a new way of buying it, via online exchanges that allow comparison shopping. They have brought coverage to nine million people, many of whom could not afford it or were rejected by insurers before. But these new markets have also seen sharp price swings, or changes in policies, that are driving many consumers to switch plans each year.
. . .
For many consumers, the volatility in the markets has been a source of anxiety and disruption. To have any choice at all is a welcome development, many say. But switching plans is also becoming an unwelcome ritual, akin to filing taxes, that is time-consuming and can entail searching for new doctors and hospitals each year.

“I don’t have a regular doctor anymore, so I avoid going,” said David Saphier, a self-employed technology consultant in Manhattan who will be switching to his third exchange plan for 2016.

Ratings of U.S. Healthcare Quality No Better After ACA, Worse, really.

Fifty-three percent of Americans rate the quality of healthcare in the U.S. as "excellent" or "good." This is similar to what Gallup has found since 2013, but is down from the more positive ratings of 2008 to 2012.

From 2005 to 2007, a slim majority of Americans rated the quality of healthcare in the U.S. as excellent or good. But this percentage increased slightly in 2008 after President Barack Obama was elected, reaching a high of 62% in November 2010 and again in 2012 just after he was elected to his second term. Those higher ratings could reflect optimism about Obama's promises to reform healthcare and the passage of the Affordable Care Act. However, since November 2013, shortly after the ACA insurance exchanges first opened, no more than 54% of Americans have rated the quality of healthcare in the U.S. as excellent or good.

Not yet out of other people's money, Colorado to vote on single payer health care plan for the entire state

After collecting more than 150K signatures on petitions, the voters of Colorado will next year consider a ballot initiative to move to a first in the nation, single payer health care plan for the entire state. ColoradoCare would, under this plan, cover the insurance bills for all residents through whichever provider they selected. That may sound like a fiscal disaster waiting to happen, but… well, okay. It is. (Denver Post)

“We’re all excited. This is really important for the people of Colorado,” said Ivan Miller, executive director of ColoradoCare Yes and head of the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care.
“Gathering signatures is really tough. I think the political consensus was we didn’t have a prayer.”
The initiative calls for a 21-member governing board from seven regions of the state. Its first members would be appointed by the governor and legislative leaders, but an elected board would succeed them.
Miller said the board could use any excess revenues to pay refunds or enlarge benefits, but it could not raise the payroll tax without voter approval.

That last sentence contains a clue regarding the one “feature” of this plan which should just be massively popular. They plan to pay for it by imposing an additional ten percent payroll tax on every working person in the state. That’s right… the state would be lopping an additional ten percent right off the top of everyone’s paychecks – in addition to the many other federal, state and local government deductions which already trim down many people’s take home pay by a third or more – to pay for what is approaching a completely socialized health care plan. I bet the folks who are complaining that they either got no raise or a one percent raise last year will just be doing backflips over that.

HHS: Bailing out Obamacare insurers an 'obligation' of the federal government

The Department of Health and Human Services attempted to reassure private insurers on Thursday that they'll be able to recover losses from participating in Obamacare by claiming it was an "obligation" of the U.S. government to bail them out.

At issue is a provision within the law known as the risk corridors program. Under the program, which runs from 2014 through 2016, the federal government is to collect money from health insurers doing better than expected and use those funds to provide a federal backstop to other insurers who incur larger than expected losses from rising medical claims. The idea was to provide training wheels to insurers in the first years of Obamacare's implementation, and to take away any incentive for insurers to cherry pick only the healthiest customers.

Republicans, fearing that this could turn into an open-ended government bailout in the event of industry-wide losses, included a provision in last year's spending bill that limited the program, requiring HHS to pay out only from the pool of money collected, rather than supplementing it with other sources of government funding. President Obama signed that bill.

Now that insurers have been able to look at medical claims, what they've found is that enrollees in Obamacare are disproportionately sicker, and losses are piling up. For the 2014 benefit year, insurers losing more than expected asked for $2.87 billion in government payments through the risk corridors program, but HHS only collected $362 million from insurers performing better than expected. Thus, the funds available to the federal government only amounts to 12.6 percent of what insurers argue that they're owed.

A new taxpayer bailout to cover up ObamaCare’s failure?

Nearly all insurers are bleeding red ink trying to sell the unworkable plans. Without a bailout, more insurers will abandon ObamaCare, pushing it closer to its demise. A bailout would benefit insurers and the Democratic Party, which is desperate to cover up the health law’s failure. Ironically Democrats (including Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders) bad-mouth bank bailouts but are all for insurance-company bailouts. Truth is, it’s a ripoff for taxpayers, who shouldn’t have to pay for this sleazy coverup.

The pressure is building on Republicans in Congress. Industry groups like the American Health Insurance Plans and giant insurers are joining with the Obama folks to lobby ferociously for a bailout.

UnitedHealthcare’s Thursday bombshell rattled investors, health-plan subscribers and ObamaCare partisans. The insurer currently covers more than half a million ObamaCare plan subscribers in 23 states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Reminder: if you didn’t have health insurance this year, the tax man would like a word with you

In another couple of months you’ll be getting your tax documents in the mail (assuming you have some source of income, that is) and will prepare to file your 2015 returns. That means that at least for some of you, you’ll be dealing with the Obamacare mandate penalties if you didn’t have health insurance. (Or a government accepted form of it anyway.) If you paid the penalty last year it wasn’t much of a bite, but next April the fine is going to be a bit stiffer.

People who weren’t covered under a compliant health plan in 2015 or didn’t meet some specific exemptions will have to pay what amounts to a fine when they file their 2015 tax return. The government has two ways of calculating what you’ll owe in 2015. That’s the greater of $325 for each adult and $162.50 for each child, not to exceed $975, or 2 percent of your family’s adjusted gross income.
The most you can be fined is capped at the national average cost of a bronze-level health plan available on the exchanges. For 2015, that’s $2,570 for singles and $5,140 for families.

That’s basically double what it was last year. The example they provide in the article shows that a young married couple with no children (the most likely to not want to bother paying for insurance) will be paying $1,588 for this year as compared to $797 last year. Depending on your income and how you set up your deductions, if you normally expect a refund every year that could pretty much wipe it out for some people. But maybe you won’t have to pay it after all.

When people filed their taxes for 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that a vast majority of those without insurance were not motivated to buy a plan off the exchanges by the threat. (Of course, the penalty was lower last year.) And not all of those who should have paid the penalty ponied up the cash anyway. There are actually a couple of ways to avoid paying it even if you didn’t purchase a health insurance plan.

Read on to find out how.

Sunday Morning Song - "Crossing Muddy Waters"

We've see Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O'Donovan before, Sara Watkins is new. Here she is singing alone:



Linked at Wombat-socho's special post-Thanksgiving food coma double-stuffed Rule 5 compendium "Rule 5 Sunday: Them Ain’t Turkeys, Them Are Ducks."

This Day In Renewables

The United States Persists in it's addiction to expensive, damaging gasohol: New ethanol rules: No benefits, up to $600M cost, EPA says

The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't expect next year's increase of ethanol put into gasoline to have any environmental benefit, but it could end up costing as much as $600 million per year.

The EPA estimates the Renewable Fuel Standard, or the amount of biofuel required to be added to the nation's gasoline supply, to have zero dollars in benefits, according to the agency's Fall 2015 Statement of Regulatory Priorities. However, the new rule, set to be announced by Nov. 30, could cost between $118 million and $595 million, according to the document.

The EPA is set to announce that 17.4 billion gallons of biofuel must be added to the nation's gasoline in 2016. That amount is expected to break the "blend wall," or the amount of biofuel that car engines can handle without suffering any damage.

The Energy Information Administration, the independent analysis arm of the Department of Energy, believes reduced gasoline demand will push the percentage of biofuels in gasoline past 10 percent, which automakers say most models cannot handle.

The EPA requires a certain amount of biofuel to be added to the nation's gasoline supply, rather than having it make up a certain percentage.

The continued gasohol program is a testament to longevity of  bad ideas in American politics.

On the other hand, the British seemed to have decided to slow, if not stop, the flow of good money after bad into the ever empty hole that is solar and wind power subsidies: On eve of Paris climate summit, Britain pulls the plug on renewables

With breathtaking abruptness, the British government has in recent months slashed its support for solar power and other renewable forms of energy, leaving a once-promising industry with grim prospects and throwing into doubt the country’s commitment to clean power.

The moves have baffled environmentalists, business leaders and even many government allies. Britain has long been in the vanguard of efforts to combat global warming. It has been expected to play a leading role — alongside the Obama administration — in efforts to secure a package of tough reforms at the U.N. climate change summit in Paris, which kicks off at the end of this month.

But it didn't baffle anyone with a simple knowledge of economics. They simply weren't getting anything in return for their investment, and winters in the UK are long and cold.

But the decision to cut hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of support for renewable energy at home, with a planned 87 percent reduction in subsidies for solar power, threatens to undermine Britain’s international authority, while showing just how difficult it can be for a developed nation to break a centuries-long addiction to fossil fuels.

Wow, ever present editorializing as news before, Washington Post?

FDA Approves "Frankenfish" as Food

The FDA just approved the nation’s first genetically engineered animal: A salmon that grows twice as fast

 A genetically modified salmon, rear, 

and a non-genetically modified salmon, foreground

After years of review and endless controversy, the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the nation's first genetically altered animal -- a salmon engineered to grow twice as fast as its natural counterpart.

AquAdvantage, produced by Massachusetts-based AquaBounty, is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon and has been given a gene from the ocean pout, an eel-like fish. The result is a fish that is large enough for consumption in about a year and a half, rather than the typical three years.

Ocean Pout

Of course, more food faster and easier doesn't sit well with some people.

Food-safety activists, environmental groups and the salmon fishing industry, not to mention lawmakers from Alaska, have long opposed the approval of the fish -- which they derisively refer to as "Frankenfish" -- and have argued that its existence could open the door to a broad range of potentially unsafe genetically modified animal foods. Knowing an FDA approval was likely, critics have in recent years won commitments from some of the nation's most recognizable chains — including Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Target — to not sell the fish.

Target sells fish? But I thought "food-safety activists" and "environmental" groups would welcome a science based decision. Foolish me.

The FDA said Thursday that its decision was "based on sound science and a comprehensive review," and that regulators are confident that the genetically altered fish is as safe to eat as a normal Atlantic salmon, with no discernible difference in its nutritional value. Officials noted that the agency held meetings, combed through thousands of public comments and conducted scientific and environmental assessments about the AquaBounty fish before finally approving it.

We should be so lucky as to accidentally create a super race of salmon.

Salmon fishermen and environmental activists have raised concerns about the havoc that could occur if any of AquaBounty's engineered salmon made it into ocean waters and mated with wild Atlantic salmon -- a scenario they say could have unpredictable impacts and lead to the decimation of wild populations. AquaBounty has said its fish are all female and sterile, making it impossible for them to breed with other salmon, even if they somehow were to escape their land-locked production facilities. The company argues its fish actually could reduce pressure on wild fish stocks and prevent the overfishing of Atlantic salmon.

"Food-safety activists" and "environmentalists" aren't really interested in reducing overfishing of wild stocks. It's not that they love food safety or the environment, it's they hate humanity.

The FDA said Thursday it will require the AquaBounty salmon to be raised only in land-based, contained tanks in two specific facilities in Canada and Panama, and that it will conduct regular inspections. The approval also doesn't allow the salmon to be bred or raised in the United States for now, though FDA officials said the company could apply to have other production sites approved in the future.

Raising salmon in Panama? That seems odd. 

Eastern Shore Squirrel Makes it Off the Endangered Species List

Delmarva Fox Squirrel no longer endangered

When the first list of endangered species was published in 1967, the Delmarva Fox Squirrel was on it. Soon it won’t be.
Nearly 50 years later, the animal has rebounded to the point that it no longer requires protection, the Department of the Interior announced last Friday, and will formally remove it from the list in December.

There are three main areas in Worcester where the Delmarva Fox Squirrels are known to be located, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the first, the E.A. Vaughn Wildlife management area near Girdletree, is the only one where it is known how the squirrels came to live there — people put them there in 1998.

By 2008, they had spread to the Pocomoke River State Forest near Snow Hill and in 2013, squirrels were found near Assateague. According to maps provided by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the two more recent colonies are unconnected to populations planted farther south in Worcester or relatively nearby in Somerset County.

Historically, this particular squirrel spread beyond the peninsula into southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey but had been forced back into the confines of Delmarva because of habitat degradation, according to a 1992 Fish and Wildlife Service recovery plan for the animal.

Delmarva Fox Squirrels look similar to common gray squirrels, but can grow quite a bit larger and are among the largest tree squirrels in the western hemisphere, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Its coloration is a bit lighter and its tail, which can grow to 15 inches in length, is composed of fluffy gray hair that ends in black tips. It can grow nearly 2.5 feet long and weigh three pounds, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

I'm not sure I'd recognize one if I saw it. The pictures all look pretty much within the range of variation for the run of the mill Eastern Gray Squirrel, which are the bane of our garden, although it sounds like they are considerably larger.

Somewhere, a devout environmentalist is bemoaning the loss of a weapon.

Clinton.com, Three Billion Bucks and Counting

Two Clintons, 41 Years. $3 Billion

Over four decades of public life, Bill and Hillary Clinton have built an unrivaled global network of donors while pioneering fundraising techniques that have transformed modern politics and paved the way for them to potentially become the first husband and wife to win the White House.

The grand total raised for all of their political campaigns and their family’s charitable foundation reaches at least $3 billion, according to a Washington Post investigation.

The Post identified donations from roughly 336,000 individuals, corporations, unions and foreign governments in support of their political or philanthropic endeavors — a list that includes top patrons such asSteven Spielberg and George Soros, as well as lesser-known backers who have given smaller amounts dozens of times. Not included in the count are an untold number of small donors whose names are not identified in campaign finance reports but together have given millions to the Clintons over the years.

The majority of the money — $2 billion — has gone to the Clinton Foundation, one of the world’s fastest-growing charities, which supports health, education and economic development initiatives around the globe. A handful of elite givers have contributed more than $25 million to the foundation, including Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra,who is among the wealthy foreign donors who have given tens of millions.

And she'll never have to worry about paying for a hotel room, or a plane ticket, or an email server ever again. . .

 Hillary fundraiser sponsored by law firm behind “Deflate-Gate”

After delivering a speech today on combating ISIS and winning the war on terror, Hillary Clinton will head off to a fundraiser in New York City — but it might have some negative impact in New Hampshire, at least among NFL fans. The law firm organizing the fundraiser, John DiStaso reports for WMUR, conducted the investigation into “Deflate-Gate,” the scandal involving the New England Patriots that almost found its star quarterback benched for the first four games this season. Will Pats fans and Tom Brady supporters in the Granite State throw a flag on this play?

The law firm whose report led NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to suspend Tom Brady for four games (since overturned in court, of course) is hosting a fundraiser Thursday afternoon in New York City. The guest of honor: Hillary Clinton.
Clinton, of course, is a former U.S. senator from New York. We’ve never heard her espouse her football loyalties (except for backing a resolution honoring the New York Giants after they beat the Patriots in the 2008 Super Bowl).
The fundraiser is being held at the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, in the Big Apple, with the cost per person at $2,700.
The firm was hired by the NFL to conduct the investigation into the alleged improper deflation of footballs used in the AFC championship game last Jan. 18.

As long as there is influence to peddle and money to be made doing it, Hillary is in.

Hillary can’t run from the messes she — and Obama — made

Hillary Clinton’s speech Thursday was billed as her plan to combat the Islamic State. In truth, her plan was to combat the idea that she is another Barack Obama.

It was a good try, but she failed because, as boxing great Joe Louis once said about an opponent, “He can run, but he can’t hide.”

Clinton can run from Obama, but can’t hide from the unholy mess he — and she — made.

As his first secretary of state, she was part of the team that botched the wars in Iraq and Syria and helped birth the Islamic terrorism now rattling the world. The slaughter in Paris and fresh threats against America make it urgent that she erase her fingerprints from the calamity. That’s impossible, so she settled for putting some daylight between herself and Obama.

“Our goal is not to deter or contain ISIS, but to defeat and destroy ISIS,” she said.

Clinton Defends Obama’s ‘JV Team’ Label for ISIS

Clinton spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on Thursday, laying out her strategy for defeating ISIS and retaking large swathes of Iraq and Syria from the clutches of the deadly terrorist group. Afterward, she participated in a Q & A moderated by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

“Do you believe that President Obama underestimated ISIS when he called it the JV team?” Zakaria asked.

“I don’t think it’s useful to go back and re-plow old ground,” Clinton said. “I think from the perspective of what they had accomplished at that time, even though they had seized and held territory, the major focus of our government was on trying to remove Assad from power so that there could a be a resolution, a political resolution.”

After ISIS captured Fallujah, Iraq in early 2014, President Obama was pressed to explain why the United States seemed to have been caught unawares. “If a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” he told New Yorker editor David Remnick.

Well, clearly it was because the secretary of State was doing such a bang up job.

Hillary announces her strategy to defeat ISIS: Defeat ISIS

To be fair, Twitter makes people stupid. . .

And finally courtesy of Smitty at The Other McCain the Taiwanese animators take on Hillary.

Rule 5 Saturday - Another Fish Monger - Luiza Barros

Nice, uh, Amberjack!

Since I've been fishing a lot (thanks, Pete), I thought it would be appropriate to post another fishing girl from my Facebook feed for this weeks Rule 5 post:

Luiza was born and raised in the beautiful country of Brazil. She's always had a love for the ocean and her fishing addiction started when she was just a little girl the first time her grandparents took her fishing. She didn’t want to leave she was hooked! As she grew her passion for saltwater grew as well. 

"There’s so much to see, learn and explore". Luiza boasts. Since moving to Florida she spends most of her time for work and pleasure fishing, spearfishing and scuba diving around the world.

Luiza has made the cover of numerous fishing magazines including GAFF magazine, Onshore Offshore, Coastal Angler & Big Game Fishing Journal. She has also written & has been featured in various fishing magazine articles over the past couple years.

You can even book a trip with her (and Capt. Jimmy). This winter it's in Baja California, for $3500 day for a 7 day trip, with at least two fishing days. Sounds like a deal to me. Let me check the fishing budget.

GOODSTUFF is following the vein of James Bond girls, for this week featuring Diana Rigg in the 217th issue of his Blogging Magazine. Linked at Pirates's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Linked at Wombat-socho's special post-Thanksgiving food coma double-stuffed Rule 5 compendium "Rule 5 Sunday: Them Ain’t Turkeys, Them Are Ducks."

Sexism is Alive and Well in the Public Schools

Kindergarten teacher denies Legos to boys in name of 'gender equity'

A kindergarten teacher in Bainbridge Island, Wash., actively denies her male students the opportunity to play with Lego blocks in order to encourage her female students to play with them.

Karen Keller bars the boys in her class from playing with the colorful blocks, even going so far as to lie to them about their opportunity to play.

"I always tell the boys, 'You're going to have a turn' — and I'm like, 'Yeah, when hell freezes over' in my head," Keller told the Bainbridge Island Review. "I tell them, 'You'll have a turn' because I don't want them to feel bad."

Keller does this because she saw the boys in her class gravitating toward the blocks during their "free choice" play time while the girls flocked to dolls and crayons. Keller's solution was to deny the blocks to the boys, who wanted to play with them, in order to encourage the girls to play with them. The Review article offers no indications about how Keller gets the girls to play with something of which they have no interest.

Legos SCOTUS members hate boys

She could have got the boys to voluntarily drop the Legos, if she'd provided play guns.

 Keller had found research finding that Lego play accelerates development and helps with spatial and math skills. And since Keller believes that gender stereotypes are ingrained into girls at a young age, well, something had to be done.

Lego David Hasselhoff

Of course, currently, the actual "gender gap" between boys and girls in science and math is quite minor:

Overall, boys are ahead of girls in math (by an equivalent of about three months of schooling), about even with girls in science and a year behind girls in reading.

Part of the reason for this more recent disparity is that boys spend less time doing homework and reading books than girls. Another reason is teachers like Keller, who actively hold boys back in order to promote girls.

The OECD also found that teacher assessments favor girls, while anonymous tests allowed boys to do much better.
. . .
As one of my Twitter followers said: "When you have an axe to grind with 5yr old boys, maybe you shouldn't teach kindergarten."

Lego Pam Anderson

The teacher and the school now claim that the discrimination was temporary, and anyway, they didn't discriminate:

Keller claimed she only instituted the "girls only" Lego play for the first month of school to get them interested in the toys. She also said her "hell freezing over" remark was "a casual, off-record aside meant to convey my frustration with the marketing to girls in our society." She said that it was "not appropriate" and "taken out of context." She insisted that every student in her class has access to Legos.

The school district called the Review article "inaccurate" and said the school does not discriminate on the basis of sex.

The teacher should be sentenced to be Greenhorn for a year on the Capt. Keith Colburn's crab boat Wizard. The $1,000,000 fine the school district should pay would be used to offset his loss of income from her lack of productivity.

First Trip to the Dog Park

Rather than a beach walk today, we decided to visit the local dog park, a few miles away on Sixes Road. We were hoping to give Skye a chance to stretch her legs, and interact with a few friendly dogs off the leash.

There were not any other visitors to the park other than some road workers parking their paving vehicles, so Skye did not get to play with any new dogs. However, past visitors left lots of pee-mail messages, and she had to sniff most of them. It's a rather big area, so it took a while.

Here she's listening to her mistresses whistle. It got her attention, but did not bring her over to see what it was all about.

A sneeze. Caa-choo!

She did get to stretch her legs, and even worked up a good pant. Note the silly husky tongue.

A very late season Common Buckeye in the clover.

Maryland Crabber Finds Lost Drone

Maryland Crabber Catches a Northrop Grumman Drone in the Chesapeake Bay

In a Nov. 5 telephone call to the Kent County News, David Haas of Rock Hall said he found what he thought to be a “probe of some kind” while crabbing with his crew by the Bay Bridge, and was taking it back to his house to look it over.

“He said it was really foggy and almost hit it,” his wife, Laurie Haas, said in a follow-up interview Tuesday, Nov. 17. “It was floating on top of the water. They thought it was an upside-down sailboard at first.”

She said her husband brought home a 6- to 7-foot bright yellow tube with fins on the end. After inspecting it, a crew member found a service number on its underside and called it. “We were a little concerned because it could have been very valuable and belong to someone,” Laurie Haas said.

The number was for Kongsberg Gruppen, a technology supply company based in Norway. Among its functions is the manufacturing of autonomous underwater vehicles, which are robotic vessels capable of marine exploration.

“Someone from there told us what we have after we described it,” Laurie Haas said.

She said later that night, a representative from Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Annapolis office called. Northrop Grumman is an American global aerospace and defense technology company. “He said that someone from Kongsberg reached out to them about the AUV and it matched the name on what we found,” Laurie Haas said.

She said the representative told her and her husband that the company was using the AUV for research in the Bay Nov. 5, near Sandy Point, when they suddenly lost communication with it. Fearing it had sunk, the company immediately began to search for it. Shortly afterward, David Haas and his crew found it.

“He said that they were using it for research into having underwater vehicles drive themselves, be able to recognize obstacles to avoid and also surface automatically,” Laurie Haas said.

The representative told the couple that the AUV had sonar and radar capabilities, and also could test the water quality of the Bay. Laurie Haas said it appeared that Northrop Grumman customized this particular model a little.

She said the Northrop Grumman representative came Nov. 6 and retrieved the AUV, thanking David Haas and his crew. He also offered to give them a tour of the facility sometime. “It was kind of neat really. ... They (AUVs) can do so much more than we can imagine,” Laurie Haas said.

According to the Kongsberg website, its AUVs can be used for environmental monitoring, hydrography and search and recovery. Laurie Haas said their cost ranges from $50,000 to $250,000.

“It was a neat catch. I don’t think David has ever caught anything like that before,” she said.

I hope Northrup Grumman gave them a nice salvage fee. That's a pretty expensive toy to lose.

The Ginger Terror Threat

The chain of referrals for this item reads like the begats,  I found this via Wombat-socho's "Rule 5 Sunday: Post-Veterans Day Recovery Edition", which featured Evi L. Bloggerlady's post "Red Head White Brits 15 times more likely to convert to Radical Islam?", who in turn blamed cited Instapundit: Milo Yiannopoulos: Brietbart: "Signs of Liberal Dhimmitude: Of white British converts to radical Islam, 76% are gingers", which finally sent me to British Breitbart's Ginger Jihadis: Why Redheads are Attracted to Radical Islam:

Definitely a source of terror

Dozens of young redheaded men and women are replacing the ritual bullying of the playground with the ritual strictures of radical Islam, perhaps – at least according to some experts – as a result of the bullying and persecution they endure early in life.

You’ve likely already made the connection between ginger hair and home-grown Islamic radicals yourself. Subconsciously, perhaps, from newspaper reports showing carrot-topped wannabe jihadis from Bradford, and TV clips of auburn brothers in east London. What you probably don’t know is just how vastly over-represented redheads are in the ranks of Islamist converts.

Suicide bomber girl

There are no surveys of jihadis, of course. The Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism organisation, told us that no one keeps reliable data on white converts to Islamism. So news reports probably represent the best data set available to researchers.

We sampled national newspaper coverage of white converts to radical Islam published between 5 August 2013 and 4 August 2014, excluding cases where there was no evidence of extremism or radicalisation. For example, Lucy Vallender, the ginger-haired Territorial Army private who had a sex change and became Britain’s first transgender Muslim woman, was excluded from our results.

Now, that is scary!

We discovered that 76 per cent of white British converts to radical Islam had red hair. In the Daily Mail archives, 69 per cent of white Brits lured into jihadism or the orbit of an extremist preacher were ginger. The number was similar for the Mirror and the Telegraph. The Guardian yielded a full 100 per cent redhead rate for the stories we sampled.

These are extraordinary numbers when you consider that in northern and western Europe, the average incidence of red hair in the general population is 5 per cent. In other words, Islamic extremists reported on by the media are fifteen times more likely than the general population to have red hair.

Unless you think there’s a Fleet Street conspiracy to single out and report on ginger jihadis – and that the Guardian is leading the charge – the data clearly demonstrate that white people who convert to radical Islam are overwhelmingly likely to be ginger.

Perhaps it's the soul deficiency, or a brain disease linked to pheomelanin, but more likely it's the backlash to anti-ginger movement, spawned largely by South Park. I have it on good authority (Georgia is an authentic Ginger) that the desire to terrorize fades as the hair turns gray.

Linked at Pirates's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Linked at Wombat-socho's special post-Thanksgiving food coma double-stuffed Rule 5 compendium "Rule 5 Sunday: Them Ain’t Turkeys, Them Are Ducks."

I Guess He Didn't Like the New Living Arrangements

Animal lover killed by dog he had adopted just hours earlier

Anthony Riggs was attacked by a five-year-old male Rottweiler that had been taken in by a county-run animal control facility.

"He never hesitated to be with dogs. Sometimes I thought he related to dogs better than to people," his ex-wife Adrienne Riggs told the Jackson Sun.

"Tony was a good man and a loving man and a good person with animals and he didn't deserve to die the way that he did."

She added: "A docile dog does not turn in three hours and kill somebody. Something was wrong. You just can't put a dog that may be dangerous out with an unsuspecting family. That's just wrong."

His wife Kathy Riggs told police she found him dead on the floor after returning home with colleague Teresa Sanchez.

The canine bit both of the women before running out of the house explained Ms Sanchez. Police then arrived and shot the animal.

"He wasn't growling or showing teeth - he just bit us like he did it all the time or something," she wrote on Facebook.

I just hope Skye doesn't read this and use it to argue for more and longer walks.

Found at Althouse.

Broomstraw Controversy Roils Curling World

Use of High-Tech Brooms Divides Low-Tech Sport of Curling

Having evolved in recent years from its beer-drinking, chain-smoking, down-at-the-local-club roots, the friendly sport of curling suddenly has a debate on its hands that in some quarters has seen the civility, and even some gloves, dropped.

Perhaps unsurprising for a sport that has something in common with a household chore, the crux of the debate is fabric -- specifically, something called directional fabric. The use of this material in broom pads is the latest escalation in an arms race among manufacturers, whereby the world’s best curlers can guide the 44-pound stone around a sheet of ice as if it were controlled by a joystick.

Sweeping with the brooms, which more closely resemble Swiffers than actual brooms, is considered an athletic skill in the sport. If that task is too easy, well, some curlers felt that it just wasn’t curling anymore.

Many of the sport’s top athletes, but not all of them, signed an agreement last month not to use the newest brooms. But with few regulations on the books and Olympic qualifying tournaments underway this month, the World Curling Federation stepped in Wednesday and issued new rules that set severe restrictions on the types of brooms that can be used.

It is not going back to hog’s hair, but it is close — banning waterproofed fabric and “stiffening” inserts, and requiring all brooms to be available for purchase at a retailer.

“There’s definitely some anger over it,” Dean Gemmell, a former United States champion and the author of “Brush Like a Badass: A Curler’s Guide to Great Sweeping,” said of the controversy.

Yes, men play curling too, but honestly, who cares?

Linked at Wombat-socho's special post-Thanksgiving food coma double-stuffed Rule 5 compendium "Rule 5 Sunday: Them Ain’t Turkeys, Them Are Ducks."

Enviros Oppose Chickenshit Energy Plan

Petitioners: Chicken poop not renewable energy

A group has organized a petition drive to declassify chicken manure as a renewable energy source in Maryland.

Food and Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group, says the state categorizes burning animal waste and trash with its top-tier renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, which receive incentives. The petitioners believe incinerating poultry poop can be as hazardous to the environment as burning coal.

"While I guess technically trash and animal waste are renewable, it violates the spirit and intention of the RPS," said Phil Ateto, a solar energy consultant, using the acronym for Maryland's renewable portfolio standards.

My bold. I guess he doesn't want chickenshit burners competing for his precious renewable energy subsidies.

A handful of residents rallied in Annapolis Wednesday before they said they would deliver 700 petitions and 30 handwritten letters to House Speaker Michael E. Busch's staff. They stood in front of miniature wind turbines.

Gov. Larry Hogan and Democrats reached a deal earlier this year on how to address chicken manure, which flows off farms into the Chesapeake Bay and pollutes the water. Under new rules, most farmers will have up to nine years to stop adding more manure to their land.

One of the reasons to support chickenshit burning power plants, aside from the their being at least partially renewable power, is that it also serves the purpose of getting rid of the nutrients in the poop, which otherwise would likely end up in the Bay.

For amusement, one might also want to look at this chart of environmental energy groups to guess at their real agenda. Click to enlarge.

Another Reason to Defund Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood: A Taxpayer-Funded Democrat Party Campaign Organization

This subverts the legitimacy of government:

Planned Parenthood is planning to spend at least $20 million fighting Republicans at the ballot box next year as the group punches back against GOP efforts to end its federal funding.
“Extremists made the 2016 election about attacking reproductive rights,” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, who was grilled extensively on Capitol Hill in September, said in a video announcing the effort Tuesday.
The group is planning to focus on the White House and Senate races in a few key states, including New Hampshire, Ohio, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The states not only have potentially competitive Senate races, but are also key swing states on the presidential map.
The $20 million will be spent on a mix of volunteer and activist organizing in each state and advertising.
“Enough is enough,” Richards said in the video. “With our supporters, we’re launching ‘I Vote Planned Parenthood Action.’ We’ll organize and mobilize to elect lawmakers who are in our corner.”

Abortion isn't my issue. I care much how many babies Planned Parenthood aborts. It's probably for the best since their mostly liberal moms, and who knows, there just may be a genetic component to liberalism. However, I do care about small government, and electoral fairness. If they can raise $20 million without federal assistance, they can give to whoever they damn want for whatever use they wish although I would think a better function for it would the mammograms they continually claim to support, but do not provide.

Just to be fair, the House and Senate should pass a bill to  provide funds to the NRA for $528 million for "firearms education programs" (it's better to know how to shoot straight, and safely)  and simultaneously cut the appropriation to Planned Parenthood. I know that Obama would veto it, and I doubt the Congress could override the veto (although, there might be enough Democrat defectors), but it would be fun to hear Obama's rationalization.

Clinton.com Can't Take a Joke

Clinton Slams Comedians for Making Jokes About Her, Demand Their Personal Information

As reported by Judicial Watch, not only has the Clinton campaign tried to censor the video but they are trying to intimidate the comics by demanding the  Laugh Factory  turn over the personal contact information of the five comic performing in the video.

This is no laughing matter for club owner Jamie Masada, a comedy guru who opened Laugh Factory more than three decades ago and has been instrumental in launching the careers of many famous comics. “They threatened me,” Masada told Judicial Watch. “I have received complains before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don’t cut the video.”. . .

The routines that Clinton wants censored are pretty funny although some are pretty crass and include profanity (so don’t watch the video in front of young kids). But they are no worse than the regular funny fare at good comedy clubs. (The skits make fun of Clinton’s wardrobe, her age, sexual orientation, the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the former First Lady’s relationship with her famous husband).
Club owner Masada told Judicial Watch:

as soon as the video got posted on the Laugh Factory website, he received a phone call from a “prominent” person inside Clinton’s campaign. “He said the video was disgusting and asked who put me up to this,” Masada said. The Clinton staffer, who Masada did not want to identify, also demanded to know the names and phone numbers of the comedians that appear in the video. Masada refused and hung up. He insists that the comedy stage is a sanctuary for freedom of speech no matter who is offended. “Just last night we had (Emmy-award winner) Dana Carvey doing Donald Trump and it was hilarious,” Masada said.

Now, try to imagine what life will be like under a Clinton dictatorship presidency.

Yeah, fortunately comics never, ever make jokes about Republicans.

How many jobs would Hillary Clinton’s minimum wage proposal actually cost?

. . .  Bill Mcmorris at the Free Beacon digs into the question this week and finds that Hillary’s labor supporters might be very disappointed with the actual results. A couple of leading economists have long since evaluated the plan and determined that job losses resulting from a sudden jolt to the capitalist infrastructure on that level could add up to some fairly staggering numbers.

Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) introduced the $12 wage as the Raise the Wage Act in March. An analysis conducted by economists William E. Even of Miami University and David Macpherson from Trinity University found that the bill would eliminate 770,000 jobs. Nearly 85 percent of the estimated job losses will come from those earning less than $100,000 each year.
“Presidential primary candidate Hillary Clinton has argued for a minimum wage increase as part of her policy platform to boost the middle class. But this analysis shows that those with household incomes between $35,000 and up to $100,000 would bear a large portion (43%) of the job loss from this higher minimum wage,” the analysis says.

Nearly half of the lost jobs – 40% – would come from those making less than $35K per year. (The US poverty level for a family of four is currently estimated to be around $24K.) Aren’t these exactly the “regular people being left behind in today’s economy” that Hillary is allegedly fighting for? Her plan would put hundreds of thousands of them on the unemployment line, assuming they even qualified.

During the debate, Clinton wasn’t backed into a corner to comment on this, but Sanders took the question. He was asked what level of job loss he would consider acceptable if the minimum wage jumped up.

“No public policy doesn’t have in some cases negative consequences,” Sanders said.

Well, that’s about as brutally honest as we’ve ever heard Bernie be on the campaign trail. If you’re gonna make an omelet you’re gonna have to break a few eggs, eh Bernie?
A survey was already conducted in Oakland, where the minimum wage is scheduled to be hiked up to $12.25, very close to the figure Clinton was pushing for. Out of 233 businesses polled, 28% said that they were either very likely or somewhat likely to simply close, with all of the jobs they currently support lost. That figure doesn’t take into account the number of businesses who would lay off part of their work force through consolidation or investment in automation.

Can the Democrats really act surprised at this point or attempt to blame Republican “scare tactics” on the issue? Oakland isn’t some isolated example outside the mainstream. Seattle increased the minimum wage for restaurant workers to $15 in April. By August they reported the largest job losses since the height of the great recession in 2009.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, when you recognize that part of the Democrat's strategy is to make poor people poorer, and then give them things for their vote using money they coerce from the people who didn't vote for them.

Hillary Clinton may have a Colorado woman problem

Hillary Clinton is not well-liked by Colorado women, according to apoll released Wednesday.
Quinnipiac University

The poll found the former secretary of state trailing each of the top four GOP presidential candidates (Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson and Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio) by double digits.

Even worse news for Clinton, who is making her womanhood acentral part of her campaign and won't stop reminding people of her gender, is that women in Colorado prefer nearly every top GOP candidate to her.