Yep, they consistently misidentified him as "Mr. Scott", who, as Instapundit point out, is not a Wisconsin Governor, but was a pretty decent starship engineer.
The title of the Time article was unintentionally ironically titled "Gov. Scott Walker’s ‘Drafting Error’ demonstrating that at least one person at the Times at least knows his correct name.
To my eye, it looks like the changes were, first, to augment the mission to include meeting the state's "workforce needs" and then to eliminate what the editor thought was excess verbiage. Note that The Wisconsin Idea is still there in the first sentence in the words "to... discover and disseminate knowlege (sic)... beyond the boundaries of its campuses."
The Times editorial ends with some perseveration about "red meat for conservative zealots," but come on. If that editing counts as red meat for conservative zealots, this outrage over word editing is a big bloody slab of red meat for liberal zealots.
While Walker is one of the more appealing would be candidates for the GOP nomination, given his appeal to both the Tea Party wing and country club wings of the party, his having spent any time at all editing a "mission statement", a bit of verbal fluff ordinarily designed to gild the underlying wooden motives of the bureaucrats who run any large university, is a least a minor black mark.
For this week's Rule 5 post, I'm reaching back into the dim dark past, the 1970s (yes, I remember them, sort of) to recall Christie Brinkley, one of the wonder girls of the era, perhaps best know for her use of epoxy-based mousse.
Christie Brinkley (born Christie Lee Hudson; February 2, 1954) is an American model and actress. Brinkley gained worldwide fame beginning in the late 1970s with three consecutive Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue covers through 1981.
She spent twenty five years as the face of CoverGirl (the longest running cosmetics contract of any model in history), has appeared on over 500 magazine covers, and has signed contracts with major brands—both fashion and non-fashion.
In an industry where some girls age out in their 20s, that's an eternity.
She's old enough to be the cute sophomore in my high school when I graduated and holding up well.
Brinkley went on to work as a film actress, illustrator, television personality, photographer, writer, and designer, and as an activist for human and animal rights and the environment.
Also noted for her multiple serial marriages, perhaps the best known to the Piano Man, Billy Joel, her second of four.
A US Navy Warship, Yours For $180,000: "AT THIS PRICE, THIS GREAT VESSEL IS GOING TO SELL FAST!!!!! CALL TODAY!" says actual listing for a US Navy ship.
But it does have lots of deck space and plenty of rail for rod holders.
When Lockheed Martin (of SR-71 Blackbird fame) finished designing and building, the US Navy launched the Sea Slice in 1996, built to dart around lakes and near-shore water bodies.
The design is a descendent of the small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) class of ship. Regular SWATHs have two cylindrical pontoons for hulls, both of which sit below the water's surface. That way, it avoids the speed- and stability-sapping waves on the surface. The Sea Slice here has four shortened teardrop-shaped hulls in total — two on each side, in lines behind each other. That design reduces drag even more, and reduces the wake.
To get the 190-ton craft moving at a manufacturer's claimed top speed of 35 mph, the Sea Slice has two MTU diesel engines and two 180-kW Caterpillar generators that give it 6,964 horsepower. Its fuel tanks hold 11,112 gallons — at a little over $2.30 a gallon for diesel, that's about $25,500 for a fill-up. That'll sting, but think of how much you're already saving off the sticker price.
For the first time in more than three decades a lease will be available to drill for oil and gas from the Outer Continental Shelf of the Atlantic Ocean, and in Delaware state officials and environmental groups aren't happy.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released a draft of the proposed Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2017-2022, with the possibility of one lease to be bid out in the mid-Atlantic or South Atlantic in 2021.
The bureau received more than a half million public comments on the topic. Delaware asked to be excluded from areas where the lease could occur, as did neighboring Maryland, but Virginia has asked to be included, opening up the possibility of drilling off Delmarva.
. . .
Maryland's decision to be excluded was made under O'Malley's administration, and it is too late to change that — proposed areas can be deleted from the draft, but not added, a BOEM official said. When asked if the administration of new Gov. Larry Hogan would take a different stance, the administration issued the following statement.
"Governor Hogan supports an 'all-of-the-above' approach to making energy more affordable for Maryland families — as long as these efforts can be accomplished in an environmentally safe way," the statement read.
Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control secretary David Small submitted comments against oil and gas exploration in the mid-Atlantic.
I think Congress should exempt the citizens of states that produce more oil than they consume from federal taxes on gasoline and other oil products.
Feral hogs rank right up there on the lists of invasive species considered “bad actors” — bad for wildlife, bad for ecological systems, bad for the economy.
Like other nuisance species, feral hogs (also called feral swine) take advantage of opportunities. For Virginia’s small — but likely growing — populations of feral hogs, those opportunities derive from legal loopholes, misinformation and a nationwide enthusiasm for hog hunting that may be taking root in Virginia.
The Virginia Feral Hog Task Force, consisting of a range of stakeholders — from wildlife managers to the pork industry — was formed to combat the spread of feral hogs. Its call to action is “Feral Swine: Not Here, Not Virginia,” and its tools include education, regulations and eradication.
Managers estimate the number of feral hogs in Virginia at between 3,000 and 5,000, located in small concentrations and isolated “sightings” across the state. Compared with some Southern states, these numbers are low. Texas and South Carolina have populations estimated at more than 100,000.
So what are they thinking of doing?
But it turns out that even well-intentioned amateur hunters aren’t equipped to control, let alone eradicate, feral hogs. Once they start feeling pressure from hunting — or trapping — they become very difficult to find or catch.
“It’s been well-proven that hunting doesn’t control the hogs,” said Jeff Rumbaugh, Virginia wildlife biologist for U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, one of the lead agencies working on the control and eradication of feral hogs. Yet, because the hogs are labeled a nuisance species in Virginia, any licensed hunter may kill a feral hog, day or night, 365 days a year.
Not hunting apparently, since hunter are already doing all they want to. Wild Hogs are a problem species in many southern states where hog hunting is popular, and it's not really controlling the population.
So, are they going to round up the girls and spay them, like the PETA minded are doing for deer in Washington D.C.? If it hard to find them to shoot them at 200 yards with a high powered rifle, imagine how much more difficult it is to round them up for an operation.
Maybe they can dither them to death, by educating school children on how bad they are.
The House voted largely along party lines Tuesday to repeal and replace Obamacare, with Republicans vowing to satisfy midterm voters who demanded a new path forward while Democrats taunted their rivals as oblivious to the plight of the uninsured.
The 239-186 vote marked the Republican-majority Congress’ first swipe at the entire health law, cuing up a likely filibuster from Senate Democrats before President Obama can wield his veto pen.
. . .
While it will not become law, the measure was designed to let new Republicans to record their opposition to Obamacare and make good on the GOP’s campaign promise to go after the law and replace it.
“We are doing it because the American people have said, ‘We are tired of this.’ It is damaging health care,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, said.
With Obamacare again facing a major threat at the Supreme Court, an influential group of Republican lawmakers is offering a proposal that they see as a replacement to the president's health-care law.
. . .
No more individual mandate - This plan repeals the individual mandate, a mechanism that ACA proponents said was necessary to help end insurer discrimination against people's pre-existing medical conditions. The mandate was included in the law to ensure that enough healthy people bought insurance to help offset the costs of covering sicker patients, who can no longer be denied coverage.
A pre-existing condition ban, with a catch - This GOP plan also prevents insurers from charging sicker patients more, but with an important caveat. Under this plan, the lawmakers envision a one-time enrollment period to get adjusted to this new coverage scheme. After that, as long as you are continuously enrolled in coverage -- and that includes switching insurance if you get a new job, for instance -- insurers can't consider your medical history. But if you let your coverage lapse for a couple of months, insurers are allowed to take this into account.
A cap on tax preference for employer health plans - . . .The ACA does it with the Cadillac tax, which is a 40 percent excise tax on the cost of coverage that exceeds a certain threshold -- starting in 2018, that threshold is $10,200 for an individual plan and $27,500 for a family plan.
The Burr-Hatch-Upton plan instead caps the tax exclusion at $12,000 for an individual and $30,000 for family coverage, and amounts above that would be taxed as regular income. That's a significant and more generous change from last year's GOP plan, which would have limited the exclusion to 65 percent of the average health plan. . .
The GOP plan also eliminates the ACA's employer mandate requiring businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to offer health insurance or pay a penalty.
Less generous subsidies - The ACA offers exchange subsidies to families of four earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), or about $95,000. This GOP plan instead provides a refundable tax credit to purchase insurance to people earning up to 300 percent FPL. The tax credits are adjusted by age and family status, and unlike the ACA, aren't pegged to the cost of insurance premiums.
The tax credits are also available to anyone under the poverty line, whereas the ACA expanded Medicaid eligibility to this group (in states that opted for the expansion). Under the GOP plan, people enrolled in traditional Medicaid would also have the option of receiving the tax credit instead, and the massive ACA expansion of Medicaid would be undone.
Other ACA features survive - Insurers would no longer be required to cover a set of 10 essential health benefits as they are under the ACA, but some ACA elements are kept in place. Young adults can stay on their parents' health plans until they turn 26, and the ban on lifetime coverage limits remains. Instead of allowing insurers to charge older customers no more than three times the amount what they charge younger customers for the same plan, that ratio is widened to 5:1, which means cheaper premiums for younger enrollees. The GOP plan also keeps the ACA's $700 billion in Medicare cuts, as previous House budgets have done.
There are no official estimates yet of what this would cost or how many people it would cover. But the plan's authors claim it will be "competitive in terms of coverage" when compared to the ACA and cost less.
So a cheaper and less intrusive package. Where's the opportunity for graft?
By scrapping dozens of mandates, we estimate premiums would drop, on average, by double digits. We'd also reverse harmful changes that limited consumers' ability to save and manage spending through health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts, and we'd encourage small-business insurance plans to give smaller employers better and more affordable options.
What our plan would not allow is a return to the days before Obamacare when insurance companies turned away patients simply because they were sick.
Under our proposal, no patient could be denied coverage based on a pre-existing condition. We create a new "continuous coverage protection," and if you change your job and buy a plan on your own, we would provide protections so you could not be denied coverage or be forced to pay a higher premium because of a pre-existing condition.
We would also ban insurance companies from imposing lifetime limits on a consumer, and we'd adopt age-rating changes, which lower costs for younger Americans. Individuals could stay on their parents' health plan up to age 26, unless a state chose otherwise.
Yes, there will still be stories about pissed-off taxpayers in mainstream media.
Even if open enrollment is extended (and I think it may be extended, but I’m less than 90% on that one.)
Even if extra penalties for oversubsidizing are not there.
Even if the IRS gets the extra funding they want in their budget (which they’re not going to get.)
I still haven’t seen the stories I mean yet — tax preparers and government officials wringing their hands do not count.
But I am not moving from my prediction: no matter how many “fixes” are put forth by the Obama administration, there are going to be loads of really pissed-off people. And the mainstream media is not going to be able to ignore it.
As millions of Americans brace for tax season, the Internal Revenue Service is requesting a $2 billion boost to its budget and 9,000 new employees as it prepares to enforce Obamacare’s tax provisions.
President Obama released his $4 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2016 this week, which includes $13.9 billion for the Internal Revenue Service. The agency asked Congress for close to $2 billion more for operations than last year—a 16 percent increase.
The billions of dollars will help the agency bolster its staff by adding more than 9,280 full-time employees. The proposed jump in employment at the IRS is an 11 percent increase from 2015.
To enforce the 46 new tax provisions of the Affordable Care Act specifically, the IRS asked for $67 million. That will cover 483 new employees related to Obamacare’s implementation.
Of course, the IRS has already complained about previous budget "cuts", and threatened slow service. I would remind them of the story of the three men chosen by the dictator to carry his piano upstairs to his mistresses room.
When they complained that it was impossible with only three men, he shot one of them. The two remaining managed to get the piano safely installed.
What a novel idea. Get some cute girls, dress them up in Daisy Dukes or miniskirts and thin tight shirts and sing country songs. It doesn't hurt that they can actually play and sing too.
Gov. Larry Hogan used his first State of the State address to follow through on a campaign promise, vowing Wednesday to push for tax relief for small businesses, motorists and some retirees, and to seek repeal of a controversial stormwater fee.
"The people of Maryland simply cannot afford for us to continue on the same path of more spending, more borrowing, more taxes and politics as usual," Hogan told the General Assembly.
He did not recommend an across-the-board tax break that would affect most Marylanders, instead suggesting cuts in four areas that would have relatively minimal impact on state revenue in the short term. The proposals are likely to face stiff questions from Democrats, who control the legislature.
Needless to say, democrats were flabbergasted at thought of short changing their goals of increasing taxes, and recoiled in fear:
Democratic aides estimated that Hogan's proposed tax breaks would cost up to $30 million a year, based on previous legislative analyses of similar proposals. Hogan's staff pegged the cost at $27 million. Maryland's budget is roughly $39 billion.
Yep, roughly 0.1% in round numbers. The sky is falling!
Oh, and the four areas:
•Repeal law requiring stormwater fee that critics call the "rain tax."
•Stop taxing pension income of veterans, police, firefighters.
•For small businesses, exempt $10,000 in personal property from local taxes.
•Repeal law requiring Maryland's gas tax to rise with inflation.
While I agree with the notion of getting the urbanized counties to pay for their own stormwater management with the "rain tax", I think its implementation unfairly hits the more suburban and rural areas of their population. But since it doesn't affect us, we;ll, you get what you vote for.
Otherwise, these don't strike me as big changes, but then, it is only 0.1% of the budget.
Just a quick beach report. Despite temperatures in the mid 30s (the harbor is half covered with ice), we made it down to the beach this afternoon. It was nice and sunny and the wind was brisk from the south. Fossil hunting was awful (2) but Georgia found a nice piece of sea glass colored purple by the sun.
"NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams apologized Wednesday for falsely claiming that he had been aboard a helicopter that was shot down during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Stars and Stripes reports.
On Friday night's broadcast, Williams cited "a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG. Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”
One crew member responded to the story on Facebook the following day, writing to Williams, "Sorry dude, I don't remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened."
This week, crew members of 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook helicopter also told Stars and Stripes that Williams had not been in the shot-down helicopter but had arrived an hour later.
On Wednesday, Williams conceded that he was not onboard the shot-down helicopter, but he told Stars and Stripes he did not intentionally make the mistake.
“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”
You don't "misremember" that you weren't really on a helicopter that was shot down in combat. You start by embellishing a story, and get more and more careless with the actual facts.
Remember this the next time Brian is in his anchor seat, citing "facts" and trying to tell you what to think.
Citing some signs of recovery and resilience around the watershed, scientists at the Chesapeake Bay Program called the waterway an "ecosystem in recovery" while still facing major challenges in its annual Bay Barometer report.
The report reminds that much work remains to be done. It noted nutrient and sediment pollution has been reduced by efforts of local communities but the bay remains impaired.
"Human activities bring more roads, parking lots and rooftops that have a direct impact on water quality and living resources," Bay Program Director Nick DiPasquale said. "Yet in the face of these constantly changing challenges, we are witnessing signs of a system in recovery. And people have the ability to positively affect and help in the recovery process. In fact, we must do so."
Among the examples of resilience in the report found:
•Between 2012 and 2013, underwater grasses in the bay rose 24 percent. Scientists observed 59,927 acres of underwater grasses and attribute the increase to an expansion in widgeon grass and a modest recovery of eelgrass.
•In 2013, the population of American shad increased, driven by rising numbers in the Potomac and York rivers, to 41 percent of the established goal for the species.
•Between 2013 and 2014, the abundance of juvenile rockfish increased, a significant improvement over 2012 numbers.
But there are also signs of the bay's continued struggles.
•Between 2011 and 2013, only 29 percent of water quality standard for a variety of measures — dissolved oxygen, water clarity, underwater grasses and chlorophyll, a sign of algae growth — were met. That is 2 percent less than the previous three-year period.
There has been a steady level of water quality attainment, around 30 percent, for the past 10 years. That follows steady signs of improvement between 1989 and 2002.
In other words, no real improvement in 10 years. Please send more money.
Crab feasts are a tradition in Maryland, a true sign of the best of summer. Almost nothing is more traditional than steaming crabs in Old Bay (or the spice mix of your choice), picking them on a picnic table covered with paper, dipping them in melted butter and more Old Bay to eat, accompanied by copious cheap beer (Natty Boh is traditional).
For years it has been thought that RedskinsIndians Native American Aborigines did not have a taste for crabs, because archaeological evidence showed little evidence for crabs, but huge mounds of oyster shells, called middens near their dwellings. However, a more careful look shows that they did in fact, eat crabs, and that it's merely an artifact of poor preservation of the shells that led us to believe otherwise.
Native Americans and America’s early colonists ate many more blue crabs than modern researchers previously thought, according to a team of scientists studying crab remains unearthed at archaeological sites in the Chesapeake Bay area.
Because so very few crab shells have been recovered in archaeological digs in the midAtlantic, anthropologists and others have long assumed that crabs were eaten rarely, if at all, by Native Americans or colonists there.
Now a comprehensive review of 93 archaeological sites across the Chesapeake Bay dating back to 1,200 B.C. has turned up evidence showing quite the opposite.
I always found it difficult to believe that native peoples didn't take advantage of a very abundant and easily obtained source of protein. I do wonder what sort of techniques they used to catch large numbers of them? Baited traps, beach nets, spears? All of the above?
The researchers found little mention in archaeological studies of the remains of blue crabs in the Chesapeake region, says Matt Ogburn, a crab ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and co-author of the paper. “Initially, when we began reviewing Chesapeake sites, we thought we might find 100 or, if lucky, 200 pieces of crab remains and claws to work with. But it turned out there is a lot more out there than we expected,” Ogburn says.
As the paper reveals, by looking into museums and other repositories “we identified and evaluated more than 900 crab remains collected from archaeological sites,” Ogburn adds. The findings ran counter to “the widely held hypothesis that people in the past did not eat crabs,” the scientists say.
Why hasn’t previous research found evidence of crabs? The answer is in the shells. “The blue crab carapace is so fragile and friable that it just doesn’t preserve that well over time,” Rick says. The shell pieces have often gone unrecognized during archaeological digs.
Although we do find fossil crab parts on the beach (including some kind of relative of the Blue Crab), mostly it's just the tips of the claws which are the most heavily calcified part of the shell. I have only heard of reports of more or less intact crab shells being found embedded in the the cliff sediments.
By measuring the excavated the crab parts–primarily pieces of claws and shell parts–the researchers determined that large crabs were more common in the archaeological collections compared to crabs caught in the Chesapeake today.
“Large crabs overall seem to have been quite a bit more common in prehistoric times than they are today,” Rick says. “That’s what we would expect, but it is good to have scientific confirmation that today’s smaller crabs are in part the result of an intensive fishery that removes large crabs from the population.”
While crabs can live for several years in aquaria, because fishing mortality for crabs in Chesapeake Bay is on the order of 70% annually (meaning 70% of the legal crabs in the Bay are caught and eaten every year), it's a rare crab that exceeds the minimum fishing size long enough to became truly giant crabs. Plus, only the males can become giants, since the females stop shedding and growing after they reach sexual maturity.
A new Catholic women's initiative rolled out by the Vatican is at the centre of a storm of criticism over a video starring a 'sexy blonde'.
The Internet promotional video, featuring blonde Italian actress Nancy Brilli, came under such ridicule that it was quickly taken down, it has been reported.
. . .
But the video soon sparked criticism from around the English speaking world.
'What were they thinking at the Vatican?' wrote Phyllis Zagano of Hofstra University in the National Catholic Reporter.
'Aside from the obvious - sexy sell has long gone by the boards in developed nations and is totally unacceptable in predominantly Muslim countries - the fact of the matter is that highlighting a stereotypical spokeswoman is not the way to ask for women's input.'
So is the Vatican just supposed to ignore the fact that pretty women exist, and that their attractiveness adds to the power of advertising for both men and women? They have a point of view to sell, and see a way to do it.
To be fair, at -16 (C I presume) snow is a lot less slick than at 0, like it usually is when it snows in the DC region. Still, a lot of our drivers could benefit from some training.
The desire of localities across Northern Virginia to tax single-use plastic bags has died its annual death in Richmond.
A measure by state Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) to impose a 5-cent-per-bag tax on customers in retail outlets was “passed by indefinitely” – sent to a kind of legislative purgatory – on a 14-1 vote in the Senate Committee on Finance.
Funds raised from the proposed legislation would have been earmarked for efforts to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Had Petersen’s measure made it out of the Senate, it would have faced an uphill climb in the House of Delegates. All previous efforts to either impose a bag tax, or allow localities to do so, died in past sessions of the General Assembly.
While I encourage those who want to to use reusable bags, I don't think it needs to be made mandatory. In some cases, reusable bags actually increase the chance of illness (being a fine way to spread and breed microbes). We use them, but we're not fanatics about it.
Today we dropped into a grocery store after exercise class, and Georgia did not have bags in the back of my car. To bag about 7 items took the checker 3 bags. Utterly unnecessary.
A Virginia lawmaker says banning the release of helium balloons into the air could help save wildlife on land and in the water.
Balloons are fouling the state's beaches and can be deadly to wildlife, says Republican Sen. Jeff McWaters of Virginia Beach, who is sponsoring a bill to prohibit releasing lighter-than-air balloons into the atmosphere.
His bill would ban the intentional release of balloons inflated with helium or another lighter-than-air gas and require more than five minutes' contact with air or water to degrade.
Violations would carry a civil penalty of $5 per balloon, with proceeds going into the Litter Control and Recycling Fund.
The measure would supersede an existing law that bans release of 50 or more balloons in an hour.
McWaters' bill cleared the Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee on a 9-6 vote Thursday and is headed to the full Senate.
. . .
Mark Swingle, director of research and conservation at the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach, called balloons an insidious form of litter that can travel great distances to remote stretches of Virginia's shoreline. A recent survey found as many as 150 balloons per mile of beach, he said.
Ed Clark, president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro, said sea turtles are especially vulnerable to deflated balloons because they mistake them for jellyfish. "They ingest them, and that's the end of them," he said.
In addition, Clark said, balloons are often attached to nylon or plastic strings that are slow to degrade, and birds get entangled in them.
While I occasionally find loose balloon floating on the Bay or washed up on the beach, I look askance at the estimate of 150 per mile of beach. I've never seen anything approaching that. While these balloons do pose a mild threat to wildlife, I'd like to see some reliable estimate of the mortality from balloons compared to from other sources. I would guess it's trivial at best.
And what about enforcement. How are you going to detect and slap your $5 per balloon tax on the three year olds that inevitably let go of their balloon and start wailing about it?
A Japanese ship operator was ordered to pay $1.8 million for illegally dumping oil residue and bilge water into the ocean last year, as part of a plea agreement Friday in federal court in Baltimore.
A crew member on board the ship who acted as a whistle-blower will receive $250,000 of that, while $450,000 will go to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for projects benefiting the Chesapeake Bay, according to the office of Rod J. Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland.
The sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake, came after Hachiuma Steamship Co., the operator of the M/V Selene Leader, pleaded guilty to violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships.
The plea agreement includes three years of probation, during which the company must develop an environmental compliance program, according to Rosenstein's office.
. . .
Law requires that such discharge must first pass through a machine that separates oil from water.
My guess is that $250,000 had better represent a lifetime income for the Philippine who ratted on the Japanese shipping company, as he is unlikely to find another berth on a ship.
It was pretty stupid of the Captain to permit the discharge given the heavy penalties involved. Even if the separator was out of order, it would pay to wait to get it fixed.
Kermit Elementary School officials called it a threat when the 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, in a playful act of make-believe, told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring forged in fictional Middle Earth’s Mount Doom.
“It sounded unbelievable,” the boy’s father, Jason Steward, told the Daily News. He insists his son “didn’t mean anything by it.”
The Stewards had just watched “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies” days earlier, inspiring Aiden’s imagination and leading him to proclaim that he had in his possession the one ring to rule them all.
“Kids act out movies that they see. When I watched Superman as a kid, I went outside and tried to fly,” Steward said.
Well, at 9 years old, a boy is about the size of an adult hobbit, so it's a reasonable worry that he could use a Ring of Doom to destroy the evil educational system. Gotta nip that kind of thinking in the bud.
A porn video that a former student made in the stacks of the Oregon State University library is getting university administrators hot under the collar.
Kendra Sunderland, 19, became the talk of campus when she posted a video on PornHub that showed her stripping out of her top and touching herself for 31 minutes in the crowded Valley Library in Corvallis, Oregon.
The clip became a sensation on campus - passed around among students on social media. It was viewed more than 260,000 times in just a few days before PornHub took it down, KEZI-TV reports.
Since Georgia and I went to graduate school at Oregon State for what seemed like forever at the time (although I did get a Masters and PhD for my trouble), I spent a lot of time in the Kerr Library, which was eventually refurbished and added onto and renamed the Valley Library. I don't ever remember anything remotely this amusing happening in the library while I was present. But then, if it happened it probably didn't take place on the floors that held the science journals.
This week, the Oregon State Police arrested Sunderland on a charge of public indecency. She was cited and released.
Some students were dismayed at the infamy Sunderland brought to campus. Others were amused. Many, though, were surprised she was able to get away with filming a porn in the crowded library for half an hour without being caught by anyone.
I'm sure there are times and places in a library that big that don't see a lot of action in an average day. And on a weekend?
'I feel like it’s always packed. I don’t know how anyone could get away with it,' student Shelby Wilson told KEZI.
University spokesman Steven Clark said monitors patrol the campus library - but they can't be everywhere at once.
America’s latest college porn star says that she dropped out of Oregon State University because she was “bored.” Kendra Sunderland told us that studying at the school “wasn’t what [she] wanted for her life.”
Maybe after a couple of years of "free" community college work, or prostitution, she'll be ready to go back to school.
Time once again for the Superbowl. To be honest, while I don't have a strong preference, I suppose as a former denizen of the woods of the Northwest, I have to favor the Seahawks, although I admire Brady and Belichick's creative cheating, if that's what it was.
A Chicago sports agent and a New York financial adviser who represents athletes and entertainers have been charged with plotting to defraud investors in a multimillion dollar scheme that also involved a notorious swindler who was secretly working for the FBI, The Smoking Gun has learned.
FBI agents late last year arrested Vincent Porter and Joseph Vaccaro for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Both men have entered not guilty pleas to the felony charge and are scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in San Diego, California on February 2.
We win the toss! Yaah!
The evening before Porter’s next court hearing, one of his clients--New England Patriots tight end Brian Tyms--could be on the field for Super Bowl XLIX. Until about a week ago, the 35-year-old agent (seen at right) also represented Jonas Gray, the Patriots’s leading rusher. In a brief interview today, Porter said he was just fired by Gray, who informed the agent it was “time to move on.” When asked if he told clients of his arrest, Porter declined to comment.
6:25 Coin toss: Seahawks win. Patriots to receive. Whew, I'm glad that's over. What tension.
For Miko Grimes, a pulled paid appearance was the last straw.
The wife of Dolphins cornerback Brent Grimes unleashed a firestorm headed the NFL’s way Monday night, tweeting an obscenity-laced diatribe against the league first for stiffing her husband, then for more serious allegations of inherent greed, a flagrant disregard for head injuries and women-hating.
And what brought that on?
Miko Grimes opened her tirade with a seeming miscommunication: Her husband asked for permission to miss a Pro Bowl practice to attend to her, fresh off “emergency oral surgery.” While Cowboys coach Jason Garrett acquiesced, the NFL likely wasn’t notified.
Since he was absent, the league yanked a scheduled paid appearance for the 31-year-old defensive back, and his wife used that final straw to stir up a league still reeling from the Deflategate scandal. . .
Since he probably makes more from a paid appearance than an average American makes in a year, that's probably sufficient provocation.
Kick off at 6:30. Brady starts at the 18 yard mark. Makes one first down and is forced to punt. Seattle hits the kicker, but Patriots decline the penalty, content to hold them at the 16 yd line. Seahawks make nothing out it and and are forced to kick it back. Woohoo! Exciting.
Patriots march down the field to the point they're threatening to score, and then Brady throws an interception. Seattle takes over at their own 14.
Lousy Lexus and mildly amusing data storage commercial from Kim Kardashian the unmentionable Armenian.
Seattle makes nothing out of it, and kick back to the New England. Is it bed time yet?
Cute puppy commercial from Budweiser.
New England scores on a Brady pass to Brandon LaFell. Kick is good 7-0 Patriots. Boring commercials follow.
Seahawks make nothing out of the next possession. Back to Brady.
Sappy Nissan commercial. I hope that one doesn't stay around.
Patriots three and out.
More ads, including an ad for Katy Perry at half time.
Marshawn Lynch makes a TD for Seattle on a short run. Kick is good, 7-7.
McDonalds ad. Esurance add starring Walter White. Mildly amusing ad for some car. Great Ad for The Blacklist.
Brady throws a touchdown pass to Bronkowski in the endzone with 31 seconds in the half left, Kick is good, 14-7 Patriots.
Some ad. I missed it.
A lot of drama as the Seahawks seem to have decided to go for a TD from the 15 yard line with six seconds. And Succeed! Kick is good, 14-14 with 2 seconds.
Half time. Lots of ads. Some football talk that basically reiterates what I said above. Then. . .
Katy Perry's half time show was pretty decent, if that kind of thing is to your taste.
8:33, Kickoff for second half, Seahawks receive.
Seahawks march down the field, are stopped near the goal line and settle for a field goal 17-14 Seattle.
More ads.
Seahawks intercept pass near 45 yd line. Penalty after the catch. Play stands.
Seattle gets down near the goal line after a missed sack on Wilson that he ran for a near first down, and a power run by Marshawn Lynch, followed by a short pass to Baldwin for a touchdown, kick is good. 24-14 Seahawks.
Beer ad, among others.
Patriot drive falls short, punt.
More ads.
Seahawk drive also fails, punt.
More ads. Some play, more ads.
Patriots drive to the 5 yard line. Brady passes to Amendola for a touchdown, kick is good 24-21 Seahawks.
More ads.
Seahawks waste a possession. More ads
Patriots drive to 6 yard line, stop clock at 2:52. Drive to 3 yard line. Brady passes to Edelmen for touchdown. The kick is good. 28-24 Patriots. More ads.
The Seahawks' Wilson makes a long pass to Marshawn Lynch near the 50 just before the 2:00 minute warning.
A miracle catch by Kerse, flat on his back after the pass was nearly knocked away by Butler. Down to the 10 ish. Another run to the 1 yard. Pass intercepted by Butler. Likely the end of the game. Why the hell did they call a pass? Marshawn Lynch makes 1 yard in his sleep.
At the 1 yd line, with 20 seconds, the Seahawks get pulled offsides and lose 5 yds.
Seven months after federal officials fired CGI Federal for its botched work on the Obamacare website Healthcare.gov, the IRS awarded the same company a $4.5 million IT contract for its new Obamacare tax program,” The Daily Caller’s Richard Pollock reported.
GI is a $10.5 billion Montreal-based company that has forever been etched into the public’s mind as the company behind the bungled Obamacare main website.
After facing a year of embarrassing failures, federal officials finally pulled the plug on the company and terminated CGI’s contract in January 2014.
Yet on Aug. 11, seven months later, IRS officials signed a new contract with CGI to provide “critical functions” and “management support” for its Obamacare tax program, according to the Federal Procurement Data System, a federal government procurement database.
Not only has CGI Federal been contracted to build a new functional platform for the federal government, but it is also back to working on an account linked to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. A fiction writer would be hard-pressed to come up with a better metaphor for the federal government’s chronic inefficiencies and cronyism.
The federal agency responsible for developing HealthCare.gov did not properly vet the contractors it hired to build the Web site and failed in many other aspects of planning it, according to a government review.
In a report Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general said that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “did not perform thorough reviews of contractor past performance when awarding two key contracts,” among other issues.
The findings confirm problems that The Washington Post first highlighted in a pair of articles more than a year ago. One of the reports showed that CGI Federal, a key contractor in the development of the site, had ties to failed projects, while an earlier story revealed that the company was filled with executives from a troubled IT firm.
The government spent about $800 million to build HealthCare.gov, which was plagued with problems and barely functioned during its botched launch in October 2013. CMS eventually fixed the glitches, but the remedies added millions to the cost of the project.
Q: Does a college classmate of Michelle Obama work for CGI Federal? Did that company receive a no-bid contract to build the HealthCare.gov website?
A: Toni Townes-Whitley, a senior vice president at CGI, and Obama graduated from Princeton University in 1985. However, company and government officials say the contract was awarded through a competitive bidding process.
Of course you take the administration and the contractor denials at face value.
The new CBO projection on ObamaCare’s impact has a couple of counter-narrative epiphanies, and the impact on employer-based insurance is just one of them. When Democrats pushed the ACA through Congress on a party-line vote and with plenty of legislative chicanery — remember “reconciliation”? — they insisted that ObamaCare would do three things:
It would not force any changes to individual-market plans already in place, nor to choices of providers.
It would not reduce employer-based health insurance at all, and would slightly improve it.
It would be deficit neutral for the first decade, starting in 2011.
The first became known as Politifact’s 2013 Lie of the Year. Not only did ObamaCare force millions of people out of their plans in the first year of enrollment, it’s doing the same thing in the second year with its recalculation of subsidies and the premium shocks that creates. Investors Business Daily points out that the CBO demolishes the second argument too:
The latest CBO report is supposed to be a big win for the Obama administration because the projected costs are 20% below what the CBO first projected in 2010.
But the CBO report also shows that ObamaCare will be far more disruptive to the employer-based insurance market, while being far less effective at cutting the ranks of the uninsured, than promised.
Thanks to ObamaCare, the CBO now expects that 10 million workers will lose their employer-based coverage by 2021.
This finding stands in sharp contrast to earlier CBO projections, which at one point suggested ObamaCare would increase the number of people getting coverage through work, at least in its early years.
Sure, you can keep your insurance if you like it, if you can find it in the smoking ruin of the American healthcare system.
As millions of Americans sit down in coming weeks to compile their tax returns, they'll have to contend with Obamacare's health insurance mandate for the first time.
Some three-quarters of the nation's 150 million taxpayers have health insurance through their jobs or government programs and will simply have to check a box on the Form 1040.
Another 15 million to 30 million people will request and be granted an exemption to the mandate by filing Form 8965. Those who aren't subject to the insurance requirement include undocumented immigrants, low-income Americans and those for whom insurance premiums were more than 8% of their household income.
Finally, between 4.5 million and 7.5 million taxpayers received subsidies for insurance premiums when they signed up for coverage on Obamacare exchanges. They will have to use Form 8962 to reconcile their actual 2014 income with the amount they estimated when they applied for a policy in late 2013 or early 2014.
Those who underestimated their income either will receive smaller tax refunds or will owe the IRS money.
But wait, the Obama administration is getting ready to make more on-the-fly "revisions" to the law.
Obama administration officials and other supporters of the Affordable Care Act say they worry that the tax-filing season will generate new anger as uninsured consumers learn that they must pay tax penalties and as many people struggle with complex forms needed to justify tax credits they received in 2014 to pay for health insurance.
The White House has already granted some exemptions and is considering more to avoid a political firestorm.
. . .
To claim tax credits, consumers need to fill out I.R.S. Form 8962, which includes a matrix with 12 rows and six columns — a total of 72 boxes, to compute subsidies for each month. Most taxpayers use software to prepare returns, and that will simplify the process, officials said.
Federal officials have authorized more than 30 types of exemptions from the penalty for not having insurance. One is for low-income people who live in states that did not expand Medicaid. Another is available to people who would have to pay premiums amounting to more than 8 percent of their household income. The government will also allow a variety of hardship exemptions and in most cases will require taxpayers to send in documents as evidence of hardship.
If the Supreme Court tears apart Obamacare this summer, the president won't be able to put it back together all by himself.
Executive action is all the rage in the White House these days, and it's hard to imagine a better candidate for unilateralism than fixing the Affordable Care Act in the wake of a crippling Supreme Court decision. That scenario would check every box: Republican intransigence; a top priority for Obama; and severe disruption in real people's lives.
There's just one problem: A good administrative solution might not exist.
"There are no administrative fixes that are realistic," said Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress. "We don't believe there's any administrative fix."
. . .
"The administration won't just be able to wave a magic wand and make the problem go away. States will still have to do something to establish an exchange … it's just not clear what that will be," Bagley said.
The logistics of that switch wouldn't be easy, but they're not the hardest part. Several health policy experts said the Health and Human Services Department could probably figure out a way to keep running most of the exchanges' technical systems, most likely as a contractor.
. . .
"It could just become a never-ending series of lawsuits," Jost said.
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