IRS: "Sure, We Have Lerner's Emails, It's Just Too Much Trouble"

Cited from the TaxProf's blog, where Paul Caron has been keeping the canonical account of the IRS scandal. 

Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search. The DOJ attorneys also acknowledged that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is investigating this back-up system.

And besides, they contain things that might get us in whole lot of trouble, so it's best they stay safely hidden in the backup tapes in case a Carrington Event or terrorist hack attack wipes the feds working servers clean.

We obviously disagree that disclosing the emails as required would be onerous, and plan to raise this new development with Judge Sullivan.

This is a jaw-dropping revelation. The Obama administration had been lying to the American people about Lois Lerner’s missing emails. There are no “missing” Lois Lerner emails – nor missing emails of any of the other top IRS or other government officials whose emails seem to be disappearing at increasingly alarming rate. All the focus on missing hard drives has been a diversion. The Obama administration has known all along where the email records could be – but dishonestly withheld this information. You can bet we are going to ask the court for immediate assistance in cutting through this massive obstruction of justice.

This corresponds with my recollection of the federal government email system around the time in question when we were told that although we had to keep our inboxes and archives trimmed, everything coming and going out was being slurped up by backup servers, which we were warned contained anything incriminating, but would be extremely difficult (or impossible) to access for ordinary restoration for the federal slugs (but a division chief?).

Even more "interesting" is the development that the IRS admits that they destroyed Lois Lerner's Blackberry, which would have contained all her emails a year after the congressional investigation into the IRS started.

The IRS filing in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court reveals shocking new information. The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. As an IRS official declared under the penalty of perjury, the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner’s hard drive.

We all know by now that Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed in June 2011 and was destroyed by IRS. The emails of up to twenty other related IRS officials were missing in remarkably similar “crashes,” leading many to speculate that Lois Lerner’s Blackberry perhaps held the key. Now, the Observer can confirm that a year after the infamous hard drive crash, the IRS destroyed Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry—and without making any effort to retain the emails from it.

Judge Sullivan has had to pry information from the IRS to learn anything about Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry. Now, with these latest revelations, I’m confident he’s not finished.

In two elusive and nebulous sworn declarations, we can glean that Ms. Lerner had two Blackberries. One was issued to her on November 12, 2009. According to a sworn declaration, this is the Blackberry that contained all the emails (both sent and received) that would have been in her “Outlook” and drafts that never were sent from her Blackberry during the relevant time.

With incredible disregard for the law and the Congressional inquiry, the IRS admits that this Blackberry “was removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.” This is a year after her hard drive “crash” and months after the Congressional inquiry began.

Another in a long line of remarkable "coincidences" in the IRS scandal. But even that won't matter if Judge Sullivan forces them to come up with the back up tapes.

Obamacare Schadenfreude: Time to Drain the Bilge

There has been a buildup of Obamacare Schadenfruede in the bottom of the vessel, and it's about time to run the bilge pump and clean it all out.

Friday night document dump: Yet another “accommodation” on HHS mandate

After getting stung two months ago by the Hobby Lobby decision, the Obama administration had to go back to the drawing board to salvage the HHS contraception mandate. Late yesterday, HHS announced a new “accommodation” that supposedly will pass court muster after the Supreme Court decision, but will it? The new regulation offers for-profit businesses the same mechanism it had previously offered non-profits, and offering non-profits a more direct way of rejecting contraception coverage:

Effective immediately, the U.S. will start allowing faith-affiliated charities, colleges and hospitals to notify the government — rather than their insurers — that they object to birth control on religious grounds.
A previous accommodation offered by the Obama administration allowed those nonprofits to avoid paying for birth control by sending their insurers a document called Form 700, which transfers responsibility for paying for birth control from the employer to the insurer. But Roman Catholic bishops and other religious plaintiffs argued just submitting that form was like signing a permission slip to engage in evil.
In a related move, the administration announced plans to allow for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby Inc. to start using Form 700. The Supreme Court ruled in June that the government can’t force companies like Hobby Lobby to pay for birth control, sending the administration scrambling for a way to ensure their employees can still get birth control one way or another at no added cost.

How serious is this proposal? Well, offering it in a Friday night document dump certainly doesn’t instill much confidence in the effort. Why not roll this out during a substantial news cycle? After all, the Hobby Lobby decision was a high-profile loss by the White House, so offering something under the media radar should raise suspicions about just why the administration wants to push this out in the most low-profile manner possible.

At first blush, HHS seems to have created at least one of the same problems that the Supreme Court noted. The Hobby Lobby decision didn’t even get to the issue of whether the regulation violated the First Amendment rights of business owners, but instead hinged on the second threshold of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The first threshold tests to see whether a regulation “substantially burdens” religious expression, which the court held it did
. . .
The second threshold is whether the government used the least-burdensome method of satisfying a compelling state interest (we should note that the court didn’t address whether the interest was compelling in Hobby Lobby, either). The opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito noted that HHS offered Form 700 to non-profits but not to for-profit businesses, which meant that HHS even by its own standards didn’t meet the least-burdensome test. That’s why the Supreme Court ruled that HHS’ mandate violated RFRA — even though the court never got around to addressing whether Form 700 actually solved the overall issue of substantial burdens on religious expression. The court only concluded that the governmentbelieves it to be effective relief. . .

So now we have HHS offering for-profits the same Form 700. That would answer the challenge from Alito, yes? Well, actually no, because now HHS is offering another option to non-profits and attempting to sell that as less burdensome than Form 700 on religious expression. That leaves HHS in the same position as they were in the Hobby Lobby case — providing clear evidence that they aren’t using the least-burdensome method by their own definition to address what they see as a compelling state interest.

Why did they put themselves in this trap? The Supreme Court will be hearing cases involving non-profits next term, including the Little Sisters of the Poor and even more dangerous cases for the HHS contraception mandate. The Obama administration clearly wants to moot those cases and gain a little time, hoping to wait out the challenges to the mandate and perhaps tire out the plaintiffs challenging it. The Family Research Council calls this new “accommodation” nothing more than the same old, same old. . .

Apparently, the Obama Administration thinks if they keep offering the same shit sandwich over and over,somebody will eventually eat it. Maybe they're just stalling until someone on the Supreme Court dies or quits.

Time to start worrying about Obamacare's effect on your tax return: ObamaCare Taking Bite Out of Tax Refunds. From the linked USA today piece:

If you count on your tax refund and you're one of the millions getting tax credits to help pay health insurance premiums under President Obama's law, it's not too early.

Here's why: If your income for 2014 is going to be higher than you estimated when you applied for health insurance, then complex connections between the health law and taxes can reduce or even eliminate your tax refund next year.

Maybe you're collecting more commissions in an improving economy. Or your spouse got a better job. It could trigger an unwelcome surprise.

The danger is that as your income grows, you don't qualify for as much of a tax credit. Any difference will come out of your tax refund, unless you have promptly reported the changes.

Nearly 7 million households have gotten health insurance tax credits, and major tax preparation companies say most of those consumers appear to be unaware of the risk. "More than a third of tax credit recipients will owe some money back, and (that) can lead to some pretty hefty repayment liabilities," said George Brandes, vice president for health care programs at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service.

The major news networks and papers won't highlight this because they're simply democratic operatives with bylines.  If it happens to you, just remember who did it to you.

Colleges are adapting to Obamacare by increasing share of costs:

Institutions say complying with the Affordable Care Act has caused them to pass on some costs to employees, according to a new survey from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

Since the act began to take effect, some 20 percent of institutions have made changes to benefits in an effort to control associated costs, the survey says. About the same percentage of colleges are considering making changes, or making further changes, in the year ahead. Of those institutions that have made changes so far, 41 percent have increased employees’ share of premium costs. Some 27 percent have increased out-of-pocket limits, while about one-quarter increased in-network deductibles or dependent coverage costs, or both. Some 20 percent increased employees’ share of prescription drug costs.

But it's working, they keep telling us. I suppose that depends on your definition of working.  Yes, the working are paying a larger share to cover those who don't.

Abortion Coverage Mandatory in California Obamacare (can the rest of the states be far behind?)

The decision rests on the assumption that abortion is "medically necessary":

Health insurance companies in California may not refuse to cover the cost of abortions, state insurance officials have ruled in a reversal of policy stemming from the decision by two Catholic universities to drop elective abortions from their employee health plans.

Although the federal Affordable Care Act does not compel employers to provide workers with health insurance that includes abortion coverage, the director of California's Department of Managed Health Care said in a letter to seven insurance companies on Friday that the state Constitution and a 1975 state law prohibits them from selling group plans that exclude the procedure. The law in question requires such plans to encompass all "medically necessary" care.

Now, some abortions may be medically necessary, but many of them fall into the same category as liposuction, the removal of unwanted tissue for appearances and lifestyle.

Remember How Obamacare Is Supposedly No Longer a Campaign Issue?

Sure you do. Of course, the facts show that Obamacare remains very much a campaign issue–the unsubstantiated claims of Greg Sargent and Paul Krugman notwithstanding–and now, via InstaPundit, we have an indication that if anything, not enough is being made about the deleterious effects of health care “reform” . . .

This is a new wish/meme being promulgated by the democrats and the reigning media, that all's well with Obamacare, and that if ya'all people would just shut up about it, the democrats can sneak past the midterms with their Senate majority intact if somewhat diminished. Don't let it happen.

Snockered Supermodel Throws Better than Preznit

Former Rule 5 "winner" Chrissy Tiegen does a better job of throwing the first pitch in a baseball game than President Obama.  And she looked way better doing it:



Compare to this wild pitch. It's about as far out as his pitch for Obamacare.



Chrissy also claims that Valentine's Day is a holiday for men.

 

I do wonder about the color of the sky in her world.

Wombat-socho has the grand "Rule 5 Sunday: Labor Day Weekend Lovelies", up at The Other McCain.

I Hate It When This Happens, Too

Just Do It

Waging War on Hepatitis C

All over the country, state governments are grappling with the same question: “What do we do about Sovaldi?” The drug seems to be far more effective than alternatives at treating hepatitis C, a disease that, left untreated, frequently progresses to liver disease and then death. It also costs $84,000 for a course of treatment.

State governments, horrified by the cost, are reacting by slapping restrictions on how -- and in one case whether -- it can be prescribed. Many are limiting it to only the worst cases, those who already have cirrhosis. But this strategy may not work, as Governing magazine points out: Patients can sue, and they probably will.

It strikes me that we are going about this in entirely the wrong way. Instead of complaining about how much Sovaldi costs and trying to tamp down its use, why not use the drug to stage a war on hepatitis C? Why not try to get the drug into as many bodies as possible, as fast as possible, with the hope of knocking this horrible disease back down to much lower infection rates? While Sovaldi doesn’t cure every case of hepatitis C, it cures most of them. And because the disease is actually very hard to acquire, draining much of the disease’s current “reservoir” of victims might help to reduce the rate of new infections to negligible levels.

There are problems with this idea, of course. Many people who have hepatitis C don’t know it, and the disease is rare enough (about 1 in 100 people) that broad screening would probably produce more false positives than true positives, though we could certainly make a lot of progress with just screening known risk groups, such as intravenous drug users and their partners. . . 

I was talking to an infectious disease specialist yesterday, down at the beach (it's funny who you meet on the beach) and we were talking about this. I said it would probably save money in the medium and long run if we just bit the bullet and decided to treat everybody we could find. He agreed, and said the math had been done.

At about 1% of the population, that's approximately 3.2 million people.  At $84,000 a cure that's $268 billion bucks. Yep, that's a lot of dough, approximately 0.5 stimulus package.

But I'm pretty confident if the government promised to buy 3.2 million they could get the price down, way down. And it would take more than a year to do it, so the

We stopped Smallpox, we have all but eliminated polio (and probably would have except for the suspicious Islamic assholes in Pakistan and Afghanistan), and we didn't do by ignoring them, and letting people who couldn't pay go unprotected.

Life's a Beach

We keep having totally unseasonably cool weather in Southern Maryland, and that's a good thing.  It was sunny, with puffy clouds, in the mid 70s, not humid, and a touch breezy. We hit the beach after a light lunch, trying to get what passes for low tide these days (I can't say why, exactly but "bay" level has been up a bit the last few days.

With the summer days waning away, the Ospreys are out hunting constantly it seems.  The chicks must be big enough to require a lot of fish.

Others are just combining a love of sun with a love for reading. That'll become a little harder come November and December.

The high water is turning the Kudzu back on the beach, while it's fallen purple flower add a bit of color.

A girl and her grandmother came by, holding a Monarch that they had rescued from the surf.  It was still alive. I suggested they put it in a sheltered place in the Kudzu to dry off, and maybe it would be able to fly off and complete it's business (mating and sending offspring further south)

I stopped at a bush that I have yet to be able to identify to look for butterflies.  Once I got to the back side, sunny and away from the onshore wind, I found a bunch, six different species, and host of other flies, bees and wasps visiting. In this photo are an all American line up, the American Snout, and the American Lady. They're hard to see, but their there.

Gaea to Man: Pull My Finger!

‘Widespread methane leakage’ coming from hundreds of vents off East Coast ocean floor

Of all the global warming gasses, methane is one of the very worst. Pound for pound, the Environmental Protection Agency says its effect on global warming is 20 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. And though its lifetime in the atmosphere is substantially shorter than carbon dioxide, it’s “more efficient at trapping radiation.”

I've seen the number quoted as anywhere from 20 to 300, but the trend seems to be downward. The reason it's supposed to be 20 times worse is because it absorbs radiation more efficiently. Redundancy for the sake of alarm, or merely the reporters ignorance? I'll let you decide.

Now scientists have determined that 570 vents, called seeps, are leaking methane gas in the most unlikely of all places: the ocean floor just off the East Coast. The findings, published on Sunday in Nature Geoscience, suggest they’re emitting as much as 90 tons of greenhouse gasses every year and appear to debunk earlier belief that there were only three East Coast seeps beyond the continental shelf.

And if there are more of these seeps — a lot more — it could represent a previously unknown source of damaging carbon emissions.

So surely, if this is a great threat to global climate it's caused by man, right?

. . . the seeps aren’t fresh ones. “The fact that it’s there in the quantities that it is — and [that] it is exposed — suggests that indeed the processes at these locations have been going on … at least 1,000 years,” Skarke told NBC News. He said he didn’t visit all the seeps, with the most concentrated clusters apparently located off the Chesapeake Bay, but “the ones we visited suggest a very prolonged seepage.”

1000 years?  I guess we can blame the carbon policies of Æthelred the Unready.

How widespread are the seeps?

The finding raises a number of questions. First on the list: Are there a lot more? The paper says the discovery suggests “tens of thousands” of similar vents could pockmark the ocean floor, emitting vast quantities of methane gas. He told the BBC that their number could be as high as 30,000.

Gaea ate a mighty big burrito. But the good news is, it's probably not going to affect the climate after all (any more than it has the last 1000 years):

There is one bit of good news: The depth of the East Coast seeps are so deep that the methane gas isn’t likely reaching the atmosphere. “The methane is dissolving into the ocean at depths of hundreds of meters and being oxidized into” carbon dioxide, Skarke told the BBC. “But it is important to say we simply don’t have any evidence in this paper to suggest that any carbon coming from these seeps is entering the atmosphere.”

Methane, whether from deep oceans seeps or fracking, simply doesn't make it anywhere near to the list of things that keep me awake at night. While, molecule for molecule, methane may be a much more powerful green house gas than CO2, it's concentration (approximately 1900 ppb) is so much lower than CO2s (~400 ppm) that it amounts to a small fraction of any greenhouse warming. Furthermore, it doesn't appear to rising anywhere near as fast as CO2.

Finally, and this can't be said often enough or loud enough, the world hasn't warmed in the last 17, approaching 18 years, according to the satellite data.

Don't Kiss the Seals!

Tuberculosis is 6,000 years old

... and sea mammals (not Europeans) introduced it to the New World.

Pre-Columbian mycobacterial genomes reveal seals as a source of New World human tuberculosis

Kirsten I. Bos et al.

Modern strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the Americas are closely related to those from Europe, supporting the assumption that human tuberculosis was introduced post-contact1. This notion, however, is incompatible with archaeological evidence of pre-contact tuberculosis in the New World2. Comparative genomics of modern isolates suggests that M. tuberculosis attained its worldwide distribution following human dispersals out of Africa during the Pleistocene epoch3, although this has yet to be confirmed with ancient calibration points.

Here we present three 1,000-year-old mycobacterial genomes from Peruvian human skeletons, revealing that a member of the M. tuberculosis complex caused human disease before contact. The ancient strains are distinct from known human-adapted forms and are most closely related to those adapted to seals and sea lions. Two independent dating approaches suggest a most recent common ancestor for the M. tuberculosis complex less than 6,000 years ago, which supports a Holocene dispersal of the disease. Our results implicate sea mammals as having played a role in transmitting the disease to humans across the ocean.

Besides, seals stink. If you want to kiss sea mammals, maybe you should stick to dolphins.

Wombat-socho has the grand "Rule 5 Sunday: Labor Day Weekend Lovelies", up at The Other McCain.

Two Hundred Years Ago Today . . .

The British invaded Washington D.C. and burned the White House. The Washington Post remembers D.C.’s darkest day, a war that no one remembers. Isn't that a contradiction?

It's a bit of a exaggeration to say no one remembers. We in southern Maryland remember, and our children were reminded in school, that during the war, a great deal of action occurred in our  region.  I worked both in Benedict (see map), where the forces that sacked Washington landed for the short march to Washington, and at St. Leonard's Creek, where Commodore Joshua Barney fought (and ultimately lost) a rear guard action to prevent the British flotilla from going up the Patuxent River to attack the capital. Artifacts from the war are still being discovered in the Patuxent.

Swimming with Swordfish

It looks scary, but they don't really want to stab you; it would cause no end of complications.

Wombat-socho has the grand "Rule 5 Sunday: Labor Day Weekend Lovelies", up at The Other McCain.

Yes; Next Question

Are People Becoming Dumber?

According to the fall in IQ scores, it is certainly a possibility:

Technology may be getting smarter, but humans are getting dumber, scientists have warned.
Evidence suggests that the IQs of people in the UK, Denmark and Australia have declined in the last decade.
Opinion is divided as to whether the trend is long-term, but some researchers believe that humans have already reached intellectual peak…..
The most pessimistic explanation as to why humans seem to be becoming less intelligent is that we have effectively reached our intellectual peak.

And the proof is that final sentence.

Book Review: "Poop, Booze and Bikinis"

You may remember some time back, my fishing friend Capt. Ed Robinson quit his job, bought a live-aboard boat, and started writing, first "Leap of Faith", the story of how he and his wife Kim cashed in their lives in Maryland, and became self described "Trawler Trash", and then, "Poop, Booze and Bikinis".

When it came out in February, I bought it for the Kindle, and had all the good intentions of reading it immediately, and reviewing it.  However, it got below the event horizon of life, and I only picked it up (if one can say that of a digital book) in the course of our recent journey across the country and back by air.   The book is can largely be described as a dryly humorous, and yet insightful book on what it's really like to live on your own boat.  Some examples...


From the Chapter "Poop":

You landlubbers don’t know how good you’ve got it. You hit the flusher and your poop magically disappears. It goes off through pipe land into some magical septic world never to be thought of again.

Not us boaters. We hold onto our poop. We keep it in a tank and carry it with us on our travels. We haul it all over paradise until we find someone willing to take it off our hands, so to speak.

I've never seen a "nice" ship's head, but the ones on cruise liners are at least clean if not terribly spacious.

"Booze":

For the most part, boaters drink. Liveaboard boaters drink a lot. Any tiny excuse for a celebration is cause for a drink.

“I cleaned the waterline”, I need a drink. The dinghy motor started on the first pull, “I’ll drink to that.” It didn’t rain today. “Let’s make a toast to no rain.” The preferred liquor for landlubbers seems to be tequila these days.

The preferred liquor of liveaboard boaters is rum, by far. Must be a pirate thing.

and "Bikinis":

The bikini is the greatest invention in the history of mankind, (or womankind). Some women shouldn't wear bikinis.

Some women on boats like to sunbathe topless or even nude. This is what binoculars were made for.

Bikini watching tip: Wear mirrored or very dark sunglasses. It makes your ogling less obvious. Holding a book in front of you helps too.

Is your wife wearing a bikini? Remember that as you leer at some other dude’s wife.
. . .
Ladies; men assume that if you are wearing a tiny bikini, you want to be ogled.

Bikini watching tip: Your wife knows what you’re looking at.

But it's not all just Poop, Booze and Bikinis. I enjoyed the book immensely.  As a sometimes editor, I noticed a few defects in the conversion to the Kindle, a few distracting spacing issues, but only one obvious misspelling on Ed's part (p. 86. of the Kindle Edition):

I once watched a sail boat leave a protected anchorage and head straight for an obvious sandbar. Sure enough, he plowed his keel onto the bar and came to an abrupt stop. This now grounded sailor simply lowered his anchor into his dinghy, drove back the way he had came and deployed the anchor. Then he used one of his wenches to crank himself free. I watched him retrieve the anchor and motor into deeper water. The whole un-grounding operation was very smooth and obviously well practiced, leading me to believe he had done it several times before. . .

Come to think of it, it could have been a wench. . . And it's duck tape, not "duct" tape, although some people differ (and are wrong) about that.

You might be interested to know that Capt. Ed just had a new book published "Trawler Trash", his first book of fiction, and already #1 in boating at Amazon. I just bought it, and you should too.

Note that all the Amazon links here link to my Amazon Associates account, and if you buy it there, it will throw a few cents my way, and not cost you or Capt. Ed a red (can we still call them that?) cent.

Wombat-socho has the grand "Rule 5 Sunday: Labor Day Weekend Lovelies", up at The Other McCain.

Waiting for the Rain at the Beach

We got going a little earlier than we have been recently. The intellicast radar showed an oncoming rainstorm, and the NOAA storm surge site showed the tide above the astronomical prediction and rising, so we decided to try and beat both the rain and tide. We mostly succeeded, only a few drops of rain fell during our walk.

 A couple of dangerous scofflaws break the rules.

A fisherman out to catch some bait with his cast net. On our way back he had about 20-30 peanut bunker (small menhaden) in the net.

A Hummingbird visits the Jewelweed. Considering where we are, it's almost certainly a Ruby Throated Hummingbird, but being a female, it had a white throat.

The Kudzu flower.  Usually concealed under the leaves, we pulled them aside for this photo. Right now, you can smell them almost anywhere on the beach.

Despite the high tide, it was an excellent day for shark's tooth hunting. An east breeze had a moderate chop chewing up the beach, and revealing big stretches productive shell hash (see the beach at Georgia's feet). This one was revealed by a wave after she walked over it. We found a total of 41 teeth in a short walk, or at least, that's how many came out of my pocket.

The omnipresent Osprey hunting. We saw them dive onto the peanut bunker right next to the shore several times. Sorry, no video.

Obamacare Schadenfreude: Drowning Out the Cubs?

Last straw: ObamaCare now ruining baseball

When a heavy flash rainstorm interrupted a game at Wrigley Field Tuesday night in the 5th inning, the Cubs were up two on wildcard hopefuls, the San Francisco Giants. But as the rain fell, the grounds crew was unable to coax the giant tarp across the entire infield. Nowhere to be seen is the lickety-split efficiency characteristic of MLB groundskeepers, but a team struggling under the ever-increasing weight of an increasingly rain-soaked tarp lying awkwardly caddy wampus across the field. Fans can be heard chanting, “Pull! Pull! Pull!”but to not much avail. Here’s video of their struggles respectfully set to Benny Hill music (Sorry, guys):

But what caused the problem? Mere surprise weather system or the unintended consequences of overbearing regulation**?

Add the Affordable Care Act – or, specifically, the big-business Cubs’ response to it – to the causes behind Tuesday night’s tarp fiasco and rare successful protest by the San Francisco Giants.
The staffing issues that hamstrung the grounds crew Tuesday during a mad dash with the tarp under a sudden rainstorm were created in part by a wide-ranging reorganization last winter of game-day personnel, job descriptions and work limits designed to keep the seasonal workers – including much of the grounds crew – under 130 hours per month, according to numerous sources with direct knowledge.
That’s the full-time worker definition under “Obamacare,” which requires employer-provided healthcare benefits for “big businesses” such as a major league team.
“Cheap,” said one of three high-ranking officials from other organizations the Sun-Times contacted Thursday – all of whom fall below the Cubs on Forbes’ annual revenues list.

For their part, the Cubs deny staffing changes, saying that a fair night turned stormy foiled them after they sent some grounds crew home based on a bad forecast.

Too good to check.

Rule 5 Saturday - Adriana Karembeu

For this week's Rule 5 extravaganza we have Adriana Karembeu (originally Sklenaříková, but us Americans can't be expected to figure out how to pronounce that), a Slovakian model and actress, known for her long legs, and her early career promotion of the wonderful Wonder Bra.

In addition to modelling for Wonderbra, Victoria's Secret, and Playboy, she has a minor acting career, including a cameo in "Asterix at the Olympic Games" (2008), playing the wife of Geriatrix, so, she either has a sense of humor, or it paid well. She also did season as a contestant on the French version of "Dancing with the Stars" in 2011.

She began studying medicine in Prague, but after winning a modelling contest, realized her true dream of wearing little or no clothes for a living.

Some NSFW pictures from her 2002 Playboy photoshoot here, here, here, here and here.

GOODSTUFF is featuring Eva Mendes in his 152nd Blogging Magazine. Kinda linked at Blackmailers Don't Shoot in "Rule 5 Linkfest with Jessica Alba" and linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup". Wombat-socho has the grand summary "Rule 5 Sunday: Peaches En Regalia" up at The Other McCain.

The Changing Room Prank

Wombat-socho has the grand summary "Rule 5 Sunday: Peaches En Regalia" up at The Other McCain.

Socialism Reaches Another Milestone in Venezuela

Venezuela plans to introduce supermarket fingerprinting

President Obama kissing Venezuelan President Chavez 

Hat tip to to Wombat-socho's "Live at Five: 08.22.14."

President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela has announced a mandatory fingerprinting system in supermarkets to combat food shortages and smuggling.

He said the system would stop people from buying too much of a single item.
But the opposition in Venezuela rejected the plan, saying the policy treated all Venezuelans as thieves.

Critics said fingerprinting consumers of staple products was tantamount to rationing and constituted a breach of privacy.

Up to 40% of the goods which Venezuela subsidises for its domestic market are smuggled to Colombia, where they are sold at much higher prices, the authorities say.

"The amount of staples smuggled to Colombia would be enough to load the shelves of our supermarkets," Gen Efrain Velasco Lugo, a military spokesman, told El Universal newspaper earlier this week.

It's inevitable that when you begin price controls, the goods will be sold anywhere else they can get an appropriate return, and end up having to be rationed. Obamacare, anyone?

However, fingerprinting women shopping in supermarkets is a novel, and deeply creepy innovation.

Whale Enters Chesapeake Bay, Dies

'Thin, disoriented' bay whale found dead

The sickly whale that was spotted swimming erratically in the rivers and creeks of the Chesapeake Bay for the past week was found dead Thursday afternoon along the shore of St. Julien's Creek in Chesapeake.

The Stranding Response Team of the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach had been tracking the 40-foot whale every day since it was first discovered in the lower James River last week. Early Thursday afternoon, following reports that the whale was motionless, the team confirmed it had died.

"Yesterday it was kind of stuck in some shallow water, and during high tide it managed to free itself of that only to go across the creek and kind of be stranded there," said aquarium spokeswoman Joan Barns.

"It is sad. So many people have been so interested, and we hate to be the deliverer of bad news. It is kind of nature taking its course."

The creature was believed to be a sei whale — a "great whale" that normally inhabits deep ocean waters.

As tempting as it is to quip that getting into the Bay made the whale sick, it far more likely that the whale got sick at sea, became disoriented, and entered the Bay by accident, or looking for a calm refuge.

So now what?



And even if they choose not to blow it up?

Blog Post du Jour

William Teach at Pirate's Cove catches the walarmists thinking aloud: Crucial Lessons From Naomi Klein’s “Climate Change” Book For Warmists

In These Times’ Ethan Corey and Jessica Corbett are really amped about Naomi Klein’s hyper-alarmist book on “climate change” and offer 5 crucial lessons. Let’s look at two which underscore what I and others have noticed about the Warmist movement:

1. Band-Aid solutions don’t work.
“Only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed.”
. . .
Instead, Klein argues, we need to break free of market fundamentalism and implement long-term planning, strict regulation of business, more taxation, more government spending and reversals of privatization to return key infrastructure to public control.

In other words, it's a ploy to promote Marxism.

5. Confronting climate change is an opportunity to address other social, economic and political issues.

“When climate change deniers claim that global warming is a plot to redistribute wealth, it’s not (only) because they are paranoid. It’s also because they are paying attention.” 

. . .
This is exactly what we’ve been talking about: “climate change” is being used as a means to push far left Progressive (nice fascist) Big Government policies. Control of economies, control of people, restrictions on business, restrictions on private investment, government doing it all, taxing people out the ying yang, government owning businesses (particularly infrastructure and energy, which gives Government control over your life). Look back at that quote from Klein again

“When climate change deniers claim that global warming is a plot to redistribute wealth, it’s not (only) because they are paranoid. It’s also because they are paying attention.”
. . .

Damn those deniers for paying attention!

Obamacare Schadenfreude: Form Follows Function?

Obamacare tax forms may pose challenge for enrollees, exchanges

Obamacare customers won’t be able to file their tax returns next year until the government sends them a form detailing their coverage and tax credits, and if those forms are late some taxpayers could face a delay in seeking their refunds.

Federal and state officials said they’re working on the forms, known as the 1095A, and vowed to meet the Jan. 31 deadline for issuing them. But some tax professionals are skeptical, citing the administration’s iffy track record on being able to meet other deadlines in the massive health overhaul law.

“It really strains credulity to think 1095A is not going to be a big problem,” said George Brandes, vice president for health programs at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service.

Filers need the forms to calculate whether they received the correct subsidy from the government, or if they owe money to cover a difference.

To the legislator, the judge and the lawyers, the law is the important thing, but to the bureaucrat, the form is the key. The form is what you use to force people to abide by your vision of the law. If they don't fill out the form correctly, you fail to receive the benefit for which you are pleading, or the freedom to pursue your dreams. Lois Lerner helped design tax forms.

The fact that they have not yet figured out how to incorporate Obamacare into the existing structure of forms suggests how radical the changes the law has imposed to the tax and healthcare systems.