Staples Workers: Thanks for Nothing, Obamacare (Laws have consequences)

Legal Insurrection

"Due to regulations imposed by Obamacare, some businesses are cutting the work hours of their employees. This was a known, predicted consequence of the Affordable Care Act. Staples is just the latest newsworthy example.

. . .

Staples threatens to fire employees who work more than 25 hours a week

Part-time Staples workers are furious that they could be fired for working more than 25 hours a week.

The company implemented the policy to avoid paying benefits under the Affordable Care Act, reports Sapna Maheshwari at Buzzfeed. The healthcare law mandates that workers with more than 30 hours a week receive healthcare.

If Staples doesn’t offer benefits, it could be fined $3,000 in penalties per person.

Buzzfeed spoke with several Staples workers who revealed their hours have been drastically cut over the past year. Many reported working as few as 20 hours.

The workers started a petition on Change.org asking the company not to “cut part-time hours because of Obamacare.”

"It’s terrible that these folks are losing work hours, but it’s not unexpected, and it’s not the fault of Staples—that’s just as far as an employee wants to look when it’s suddenly gotten harder to pay the bills and feed their families.

"You think it’s bad now, wait until people start dealing with their tax returns." . . .

Snarker-in-Chief; No one — least of all the American people — is exempt from our president’s snark.

Victor Davis Hanson

"Snark is a popular word used for a particular sort of off-putting sarcasm. Snarkiness can manifest itself as adolescent cheap shots, snide condescension, or simple ad hominem patronizing — a sort of “I know you are, but what am I?” schoolyard name-calling." . . .

. . . "President Obama is well known both for ad hominem dismissals of his supposed enemies — everyone from Fox News to the Tea Party to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity — and for his evocations of nefarious straw men who, he claims, if left unchecked, would uninsure the poor, pollute the environment, hurt the illegal immigrant, and wage perpetual war abroad. But Obama’s snarky putdowns and condescending afterthoughts are a particularly disturbing subset of these rhetorical devices, used by him in the grand world of diplomacy as well as in often petty domestic contexts." . . .

Full article here.

Why did Obama have a closed door meeting in the White House with Islamic imams and known Islamic terrorists?

Jim Campbell  "There is absolutely no way to sugar coat it, the U.S. and allied forces will not take the Islamic State completely down until Obama is likewise removed from his current position in the Oval Office. 

"When the Islamic Jihadist burned alive a Jordanian pilot, Obama called a closed-door meeting of Muslims, then finally went to the National prayer Breakfast on Feb 5 and condemns Christians for the Crusades.  He has yet to admit that the jihadists savages are Islam Muslims, nor is he capable of saying two words, Islamic Jihadist.

"How do we defend ourselves against this sort of treachery?  How can a “So called commander-in chief be qualified to lead the worlds strongest and technologically most sophisticated military force on earth.

"He can’t and that’s why he goes immediately to his Muslim brothers for discussion. " . . .

Alan Caruba: It's Not Just Brian Williams

Warning Signs

"Are we seeing a trend here? Dan Rather at CBS and now Brian Williams at NBC? Well, two news anchors are not a trend, but biased and bad reporting is. It’s not new, but it does seem to be gathering momentum and nowhere has it been more apparent than the millions of words written and spoken about “global warming” and now “climate change.”

 . . .

"Today, though, the President is an unrelenting voice about the dangers of “climate change” which he and John Kerry, our Secretary of State, have rated the “greatest threat” to the world. Obama’s national security strategy document was released just a day before he equated the history of Christianity with the barbarism of today’s Islamic State.

"The national security document included terrorism to which it devoted one out of its 29 pages.  Essentially Obama sees all the problems of the world, real and imagined, as challenges that require “strategic patience and persistence.” This is his way of justifying doing nothing or as little as possible." . . .

‘UNREAL': Obama calls murdered Jews just ‘a bunch of folks’ shot ‘in a deli’ [video]

Twitchy

TOO FIERCE: Southern Poverty Law Center Puts Ben Carson On Watch List As An “Extremist” Danger To Gays

Dr Ben Carson is a national treasure and I fear what will be done to him by the left if they consider him a political threat. This looks like a sample of what is in store for him:

Pat Dollard "Excerpted from The Daily Caller: Ben Carson is receiving a lot of attention as a potential presidential candidate, but he’s now also getting noticed as an apparent “anti-gay” extremist.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which considers itself a civil rights advocacy group, recently placed the famed neurosurgeon on its “Extremist Watch List” — a list that mainly includes neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

Carson was included for allegedly being “anti-gay.” The SPLC considers his opposition to gay marriage to be hateful and worthy of inclusion in the list.

The remarks the group cites for determining Carson is an extremist include this line from his book, “America the Beautiful”: “[I]f we can redefine marriage as between two men or two women or any other way based on social pressures as opposed to between a man and a woman, we will continue to redefine it in any way that we wish, which is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire.”

Other evidence for his supposed bigotry towards the LGBT community includes giving a speech at an event hosted by a group that opposes gay marriage. Keep reading

Read more

The decline and fall of NBC News

Politico

"When Comcast acquired NBCUniversal in 2011, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts called NBC News "the crown jewel" of his new empire. With good reason: At the time, the news division was dominant on all fronts. 'Today' was number-one in the morning, 'Nightly News' was number-one at night, and 'Meet The Press' was number-one on Sunday."

. . .

"All things considered -- the failure to right the ship at 'Today', the public humiliation of David Gregory, the failure to back Brian Williams (at least initially), the severe ratings declines at NBC, MSNBC and CNBC, and the Horowitz fiasco -- many industry insiders are wondering how much more time Fili-Krushel will have at the helm."

Israel and Egypt forewarned of synchronized ISIS-Sinai assaults in both countries

Egyptian forces build up in Sinai to battle Islamists

DEBKAfile  "Intelligence gathered by Egypt and Israel attest to the former Ansar Bait al-Maqdis - now reborn as the Islamic State’s operational arm in Sinai – being well into advanced preparations for a large-scale terrorist offensive targeting Israel forces manning the Egyptian frontier, along with a string of Egyptian targets across Sinai up to and including the Suez Canal and Cairo.

"According to DEBKAfile’s counter-terrorism sources, the Islamist group was so elated by the outcome of its multiple attacks on Jan. 29, which left at least 40 Egyptian soldiers dead and more than 100 injured in Sinai and Suez towns, that it is determined to keep going.

"Using different types of rockets, including Grads, as well as mortars and car bombs, terrorist squads then broke into military bases in four cities in Sinai and two on the Suez Canal and set them on fire. Others killed all the personnel aboard military and police convoys before putting them to the torch.

"The ISIS Sinai arm is planning to target Israeli forces with a similar type of multiple offensive. Appropriate precautions for fending off this attack are in place.

"Cairo banned Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, as a terrorist organization in the wake of the support the Palestinian extremists extended to ISIS for this wholesale assault, supplying the terrorists with rockets and intelligence.

"In addition to Hamas, DEBKA’s sources report that Ansar Bait al-Maqdis has entered into operational collaboration with a newly-established Egyptian Islamist group, which calls itself “Agnad Misr” – Soldiers of Egypt. This group first broke surface on Jan. 24 with a communiqué bearing the motto “Retribution is Life.”  It turns out to be made up of Salafi extremists mixed with former members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, one of the forerunners of the original Al Qaeda. Its terror agenda focuses on Cairo and its environs.

The Scorching of California; How Green extremists made a bad drought worse

Victor Davis Hanson  "In mid-December, the first large storms in three years drenched California. No one knows whether the rain and snow will continue—only that it must last for weeks if a record three-year drought, both natural and man-made, is to end. In the 1970s, coastal elites squelched California’s near-century-long commitment to building dams, reservoirs, and canals, even as the Golden State’s population ballooned. Court-ordered drainage of man-made lakes, meant to restore fish to the 1,100-square-mile Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, partly caused central California’s reservoir water to dry up. Not content with preventing construction of new water infrastructure, environmentalists reverse-engineered existing projects to divert precious water away from agriculture, privileging the needs of fish over the needs of people. Then they alleged that global warming, not their own foolish policies, had caused the current crisis.
. . .
"Could California still save itself? . . .there may be only two things left for California farmers to do: pray for the recent wet weather to continue; and, if it does, pray further that environmentalists do not send the precious manna from heaven out to sea."

Striking Photos Show Struggle Of Farmers In California Drought  . . . "In images from the western San Joaquin Valley, photographer Randi Lynn Beach shows the plight of farmers aching for more water -- a need she says folks in urban areas sometimes fail to grasp." ...

Dead almond trees. Firebaugh, Calif.

Dramatic Photos of California's Historic Drought  "According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 82 percent of the state of California currently falls in the "Extreme Drought" category. The years-long dry spell has tapped groundwater reserves and left reservoirs at record lows. Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville are both down to 30% of full capacity, exposing steep shorelines that were formerly under hundreds of feet of water. Marinas are crowding into ever-smaller coves as the water recedes, and ramps and roads no longer reach the shoreline. Getty Images photographer Justin Sullivan traveled to a number of these reservoirs last month and captured dramatic images, evidence of the severity of the water crisis in California."

Some glimpses of what the world press refers to as "youths"

Coexist graffiti artist badly beaten by Muslim 'youths'  "Every time I see a “Coexist” bumper sticker (and I see a lot of them in Berkeley), I think of soft-headed liberals who don’t understand the first thing about jihad. One of those Coexist fans just got mugged by reality (in Irving Kristol’s famous words), not in Berkeley, but in Paris. "  

. . . 

"Jihandists have no interest at all in coexistence. They want domination. That’s pretty simple, but beyond the understanding of people who pride themselves in their sophistication.  Cobo is lucky to be alive. Let’s hope he wises up."

Islamist Fan-Boys   . . . "For a significant group of young, disaffected, and psychologically malleable Muslim men and women, this video and others like it are undeniably effective recruiting tools. Many young men are easily tempted by promises of adventure, risk, violence, sex, and finally, justice.  ISIS offers it all, at least in theory, and videos like the execution of Lieutenant al-Kassasbeh play to those yearnings. 

Brutal VIDEO from the Netherlands: Muslims  "Youths" beat, kick non-Muslim girl
Stills only as YouTube has removed the video

http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/02/branco-cartoon-tongue-tied/

MSNBC solidifies its standing as the clown version of cable news

Thomas Lifson  "I suppose you call this another historic first for Eric Holder: the first attorney general asked by a TV interviewer to quack like a duck on air. The incident came toward the end of a fawning interview by Melissa Harris-Perry (no stranger to clownish and embarrassing stunts, some of which caused tearful on air apologies).

. . .

"Compared to Al Sharpton, also an MSNBC mainstay, Harris-Perry has a bigger vocabulary, but less excuse for idiotic hijinks. She is, after all, a professor at Wake Forest University, and was recently named director of something called the Pro Humanitate Institute:" . . .

Two more arguments for not trusting the climate change advocates.

Rick Moran- Report: 'Wholesale Manipulation of the Temperature Record'  "Even for those of us who follow the climate change debate fairly closely, this is a shocker.

"A noted researcher has discovered huge discrepancies in the published and actual temperatures at weather stations around the world. Not surprisingly, almost all of the discrepancies show an increase in temperature.   Full article

Alan Caruba- Lukewarm About Climate Change

"In short, climate change is not worse than we thought,” wrote Bjorn Lomborg in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal. He is best known as the author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and his skepticism is welcome, but insufficient.

. . . 

"The problem with Lomborg’s commentary is that he confuses climate change with global warming, the hoax concocted in the late 1980s by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in order to have an international tax imposed on “greenhouse gas emissions”, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), that the IPCC guaranteed was going to heat up the Earth in a few decades unless greatly reduced. Lomborg even cites the IPCC which has grown notorious for its lies."