We can spend our way out of a recession, right? And the deeper it gets, the more we need to spend, right?¹ Check out this video from Citizens Against Government Waste²

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Bailout, Budget Deficit, Campaign Promises, Economy, Government Incompetency, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Healthcare, Integrity, National debt, Obama, pelosi, reid, Social Security, Taxes, Unemployment Hide

No HP TouchPads in Denver¹

Can this be real? If you use a HP TouchPad in Denver, the product warranty will be blown.

That is the conclusion we drew reading the TouchPad product specification in conjunction with the fine print from the limited warranty.

The “Environmental Requirements“² for the HP TouchPad state:

“Altitude (unpressurized) Operating 0 to 5,000 ft (0 to 1,524 m)”

The 1-Year HP Web OS Limited Warranty³ in turn states:

“EXCLUSIONS: This Limited Warranty does not apply … (2) to damage caused by … any other cause beyond the range of the intended use.“

This seems to imply that places like Denver are off limits to HP TouchPad users. Salt Lake City, Reno and other similar cities are marginal. Not to speak of almost every respectable ski resort around the globe, or the cabins of most commercial aircraft (that have effective cabin altitudes above 5,000 ft in cruise.)

What were they thinking??

Maybe they should rehire some of the people they let go.

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Altitude Restriction, Denver, HP, Technology, TouchPad Hide

The Obama GrabTM

Everyone surely knows the whole body naked-scanning machines that TSA rushed into service at airports around the country immediately after the mid-term elections. These days they are impossible to miss while traveling.

If one were to wonder if safety was forgotten in the rush to field the machines as quickly as possible, here’s some food for thought:

• Boston TSA employees seem to be experiencing a higher than average rate of skin cancer¹
• FDA has not tested the full body scanners for safety²
• NIST has not tested the full body scanners for safety³
• additional action was recommended by the Johns Hopkins University to avoid exceeding the general public dose recommendation of 100 mrem per year⁴
• the units have areas where beam overshoot will expose bystanders to repeated doses; protective shields were recommended, but seem to not have been implemented⁵
• the systems were never studied for their cancer inducing properties using standard methods such as mutant mice⁶
• the often quoted comparison between cosmic background radiation received during flight and the scanning machines is inaccurate, because the energy levels of the radiation are orders of magnitude different⁷
• the dose estimations are likely to be inaccurate (too low), because the energy levels used concentrate more of the radiation in and near the skin, causing localized doses much higher than the “full body average”⁸

To be fair, the FDA responded to some of these issues⁹. Strangely, in the lengthy response nowhere does the FDA state that it studied the systems itself, or that the FDA has determined the systems to be safe. The response made reference to third party safety studies, but not only were these studies not performed on behalf of the FDA on the systems themselves, some of them pointed out issues that had not been addressed by the TSA¹⁰.

Further, a key study made by JHU was heavily redacted, making independent verification impossible. Not to mention that the characterization of the third party evaluations was at best questionable, as the FDA claimed NIST had provided “safety data”, when NIST states that it didn’t test the units for safety¹¹.

And last but not least, in a response to the FDA, it seems that the JHU report was inconsistent and in fact implies that the primary radiation was measured in a manner that provided a lower than actual reading¹².

Perhaps we should all just drive a car or resign ourselves to the Obama Grab^TM until we can all vote out the Dear Leader and his gang that brought us this multi-billion dollar skin cancer experiment.

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Cancer, Cover-Up, DHS, Full Body Scanners, Government Incompetency, Government inefficiency, Obama, Obama Grab, Radiation Dose, TSA Hide

James Taylor of Forbes has reported on new NASA data in an article titled “New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hold In Global Warming Alarmism“¹. Basically it shows that all the climate models put forth by global warming (aka climate change) alarmists are faulty. For those inclined to read the underlying scientific paper titled “On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance“, it is available from the peer reviewed journal Remote Sensing².

Time for a new theory, or in this case fairy tale, Church of Man Made Global Warming folks. I bet Prince Charles feels pretty stupid right now, or should anyway. And algoracle still laughs all the way to the bank. There sure are plenty of suckers out there.

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Algoracle, Climate Change, Economy, Global Warming, Green Economy, Hoax, Integrity, IPCC, Prince Charles, Suckers Hide

Democrats in Congress clearly are not afraid to attack those who ask them questions. In this case, physically assaulting a student who just wanted to know of Democrat Congressman Bob Etheridge from North Carolina if he supported the Obama agenda. It seems that North Carolina has no qualms with sending thugs to Congress.¹

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

2010 Elections, Assault, Democrat, Obama, Scum Hide

This requires at least a basic understanding of the issues in the Middle East. With it you are likely to find this funny, regardless of which side you are on.¹

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Gaza, Google Censorship, HAMAS, Israel, Muslim Extremism, Terrorism Hide

Obama Motion - Uncovered

The corruption case for former Illinois governor Blagojevich is getting more interesting thanks to a PDF file snafu with a defense motion document.

While the judge has ordered certain topics to be kept under seal, it seems that someone chose to redact text ¹ by changing the background color of the text, rather than completely erasing the text.

Anyone with some experience with Adobe Acrobat can easily uncover the text, either by cutting and pasting it to another document, or by changing the text color back to what it would normally be.

We have attached a version of the PDF that shows the previously hidden parts of the document. However, we wanted to highlight the parts that had been erased, and instead of changing the document so that the previously hidden text looks normal, we chose to change the text color such that the redacted portion appear white on a black background.²

A revelation in the previously hidden parts of the document is that Blago alleges that he talked to Obama about the Senator seat shopping that landed him in his current predicament, in addition to other corrupt topics. Further, Blago claims that tapes and documents the government doesn’t want to produce to the defense prove his case.

What makes this interesting, is that if the tapes and documents are as damaging as Blago alleges, then Obama might be caught in a lie when he claimed to never have spoken with Blago about such topics.

It would be very interesting indeed, if Blago’s defense will turn into Obama’s version of the blue dress with spots.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Blagojevich, Buy-A-Senator, Ethics, Government Corruption, Illinois, Obama Hide

A musical break…¹

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

2010 Elections, Budget Deficit, Campaign Promises, Congress, Constitution, Economy, Ethics, Government Incompetency, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Gun Control, Healthcare, Integrity, Kick The Bumbs Out, National debt, pelosi, reid, See You In November, Taxes, Unemployment Hide

Investor’s Business Daily¹ has listed 20 examples of how ObamaCare will take away freedom of choice for Americans.

A shortened version:

1. It will cost $750 annually to go without health insurance, even if you are young and healthy. (Section 1501)

2. You won’t be able to get health insurance premiums that reflect your (presumably good) lifestyle. (Section 2701).

3. You won’t be able to bargain for lower health insurance costs by agreeing to certain coverage limits. (Section 2711).

4. You won’t be able to save by choosing a policy that doesn’t cover some preventive care. (Section 2712).

5. You won’t be able to offer cheaper insurance to employees by limiting the definition of “children” to something less than 26 years of age. (Section 2714).

6. “You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.” Regardless of if you need such services or not. (Section 1302).

7. Trying to balance cost of the plan with what percentage the plan covers is limited. (Section 1302 (d) (1) (A))

8. You can’t offer (or buy) policies with higher deductibles than $2,000/$4,000 in exchange for a lower premium. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).

9. It will cost an employer with more than 101 employees $750 (or $2,000 to $3,000, depending on what comes out of the closed door meetings) not to offer insurance. (Section 1513).

10. You can’t place more than $2,500 into a Flexible Health Spending Account. (Section 9005 (i)).

11. Physicians will be pressured into limiting the services they use through government monitoring. (Section 3003 (i))

12. A physician won’t be able to own a hospital. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A))

13. A current physician owner of a hospital won’t be able to expand the hospital, except in limited circumstances, and even then the expansion is very limited. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B), Section 6601 (i) (3) (E) and Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).

14. The government will control premium increases. (Section 1003)

15. The government will take $2.3 billion or more every year from the pharmaceutical industry. (Section 1404, and Section 9008 (b))

16. The government will take $2 billion or more every year from medical device makers. (Section 9009 (b), and Section 1405).

17. The government will take $6.7 billion or more every year from insurance companies. (Section 1406, and Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B))

18. Insurance companies will be limited in what kind of talent they can hire as CEOs, as deferred compensation is limited to $500,000. (Section 9014).

19. You will face a marriage penalty in that you will pay an additional 0.5% tax, or perhaps as much as 3.8%, on income over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. (Section 9015, and Section 1402)

20. Cosmetic surgery, or whatever is defined as such by the government, has a 5% tax on it. (Section 9017).

We won’t even begin with the many Constitutional problems this bill poses. Hope and change, Komrade.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Budget Deficit, Constitution, Healthcare, Hoax, Obama, pelosi, reid, Social Security, Taxes Hide

Paul Revere in the 1790 Census

A recurring topic these days is the 2010 US Census, and what exactly one has to do in response to the tri-fold form currently being mailed to every known “home” in the United States.

Information, misinformation, believes, and rumors abound, and the situation isn’t helped by somewhat misleading information provided by the Census itself. (This will be discussed below.)

It isn’t our intention to interpret law or provide legal advice, but it seems to us that one could take a few different positions on the Census:

1. Respond in full, perhaps using the form as requested, or waiting for a door-to-door Census worker to pay a visit;
2. Not respond at all, and waiting to see if a door-to-door Census worker appears;
3. Respond in full or in part, but making some inaccurate or misleading statements on the form; or
4. Respond only to the part that is required for the Census to perform its Constitutional function.

(more…)

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

1790 Census, 2010 Census, Constitution, Government takeover, Paul Revere, Privacy Hide