Obamacare Helping Make Sure Small Business Stay Small

Small Businesses, as claimed by politicians of all stripes, help drive America. Indeed Obama himself lauded them as as “the lifeblood of our economy".

So the Obama administration, courtesy of Obamacare, is driving them into the ground with increased costs and administratrivia.

The Detroit News: Small business already sick of Obamacare

Read the whole article, but here's the rub: To keep offering the same health plan to their employees that they were offering before Obamacare would cost American Gear & Engineering Inc an additional $107,000 per year.

For a small business, an additional $107K is not an affordable added expense to bear and be able to keep in business, especially in this economy.

As Emerson says:

“That’s a helluva change. I’ve got some guys out in the shop whose wives have serious health conditions. How do any of us get ahead? How do you get motivated to come to work? How do I get motivated to come to work?”

Motivation will likely be in the form of an IRS audit after daring to speak out about this unaffordable Obamacare train wreck.

I've Heard Of House Hoarders, But Car Hoarders?

A rather strange sight was seen in the parking lot this morning at work:

Notice how low to the ground the car is due to all the weight of the crap piled inside. Driving it with a complete lack of visibility out of the sides and rear must be a treat coupled with the lowered clearance.

The car noticeably stank even in these freezing temperatures, but at least there were no visible bodies in all that rubbish.

Both the person driving the car and the car itself certainly need a serious intervention.

Home Invasions In Detroit Are Becoming Costlier For Criminals

In recent weeks, in separate incidents, 5 home invaders have assumed room temperature after being shot by homeowners.

The Detroit News: Detroit man shoots at intruders, killing one in latest home invasion

Another would-be burglar was fatally shot Thursday by a homeowner — at least the fifth such incident in recent weeks.

Thursday’s shooting happened at about 12:30 p.m. when two men allegedly broke into a home on the 8200 block of Penrod on the city’s west side, Detroit Police Third Deputy Chief Rodney Johnson said.

“The homeowner was able to retrieve his weapon, and fired off one shot, hitting one of the burglars,” Johnson said. “He ran away and collapsed in the driveway. The other burglar was able to escape.”

There's clearly been a sea-change in policy in the Detroit police department. Here's what the Third Deputy Chief said about the incident:

It's a message to the criminals: stop coming into people’s homes unannounced and uninvited," Johnson said.

Truer words were never spoken in Detroit.

When Canada Was A Nuclear Power

A post by the esteemed Vodkapundit on the Genie missile sure brings back some history.

Many people don't realize this, but for a brief period, our peaceful neighbor to the north was a nuclear power.

Yes, the Canucks had nukes.

Canada had CF-101 Voodoo Interceptors equipped with nuclear-tipped Genie rockets, not to mention nuclear-tipped BOMARC missiles and 16 nukes for the Honest John system deployed in Germany. Funnily enough the first airplane model I ever built as a kid was a CF-101 with a Genie missile slung on it.

Wisely, to prevent the Canadians from using these weapons to take over the world, because otherwise only the facts that it was hockey night and Canada already had a lock on the world's supply of Labatt's was holding them back, the US maintained control of the warheads. So while the US kept the launch codes, they were in Canada under a joint control arrangement. Had push come to shove, they would have been fully released to Canadian Forces users for deployment. Thankfully that never happened.

It wasn't exactly secret that the weapons were there and Canada had them, but it certainly wasn't well known or talked about.

I remember the shocked looks among the bien pensant in Toronto who loved to claim that Canada was a peaceful nuclear-weapon free nation that only used nuclear energy for peaceful purposes -- unlike those warmongers to the sout -- when in 1984 the Voodoos were retired and it was mentioned the nuclear tipped Genies were being retired with them.

"We're retiring what?!?"

Priceless.

Another Instance Of Educational Zero Tolerance Follies

Apparently, merely pointing fingers in a manner reminiscent of pointing a gun can get a 10 year old suspended from school these days.

The Detroit News: Ohio student, 10, points finger like gun, is suspended

A central Ohio principal says she suspended a 10-year-old boy from school for three days for pretending his finger was a gun and pointing it at another student’s head.

Yet another example of zero tolerance equaling zero sense and leading to absurd results. A three day suspension for using a hand as a handgun? Wow. No point just telling the kid not to do it and move on right? That would make too much sense. Instead let's deprive him of three days of school just to show that it can be done. Who knows how long you're suspended if you actually hit another kid. Sheesh.

The kid was just playing as kids do, but you better be careful kid, that'll show you not to play and it'll go on your permanent record!

Is That More Global Warming I See Before Me?

About three inches plus of fresh global warming arrived last night, making for the 20th snowfall this season that deposited more than 2 inches and that's not counting the multiple snowfalls of 1 inch or less that we've had. Gettign real tired of shoveling here, that's for sure.

If we get only 10 more inches before winter ends, we'll beat the record set in 1880.

The Detroit News: Expert: Detroit's second snowiest winter unlikely to surpass record

Metro Detroit’s worst winter since 1950 continues to grind away as another 3 to 4.5 inches of snow fell Saturday night, and the National Weather Service forecasts more frigid days and snow this week.

This winter is already the second snowiest recorded for the Detroit region in its history, but it will likely not match or surpass the all-time snowiest winter of 93.6 inches set in 1880-81, said Dan Thompson, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in White Lake Township. This season’s total stands at 83.7 inches after Saturday’s snow, according to the Weather Service.

According to the article, Detroit had the most extreme winter weather of any city in the country this year, and the harshest winter in 64 years. Isn't that just great? But at least it confirms our feeling that this has indeed been a winter of suck.

Obama To Ukraine: CrimeA River

Obama just issued a sternly worded note of concern to all the goings on in Ukraine. That and a $1.50 may buy the Ukrainians some cold comfort.

History may not repeat but it sure is rhyming here, and not in our geopolitical favor.

We have an area with an ethnic population with kinship and identification to a neighbor rather than to their fellow countrymen, armed men swarming about, and outside military intervention set to separate the region from its nation-state.

Yep, the precedent set with Kosovo separating from Serbia kinda fits the current situation nicely, and remember, a Democrat predecessor to Obama was firmly on Kossovo's side back then in separating it from Serbia.

Awfully hard to insist on territorial integrity for the Ukraine when but a few short years ago the precedent was for the opposite result.

Multiply that by the fact that there is no effective means for the US or the EU to protect the Ukraine from Russia grabbing back the historically Russian Crimea, which is populated by a majority of ethnic Russians.

In other words, mildly worded warnings and platitudes are the most you can expect from Obama at this point. Especially as he's busy cutting our military to focus on further transforming the US domestically and preventing the US from acting in its interests abroad, it's not likely he's going to push for a grand Eastern European vacation.

Even if he wanted to do so, it wouldn't be a good idea.

As Michael Z. Williamson said recently on Facebook: "Please DO NOT tell the President we have a Light Brigade.".

Good Gun Bills Moving In Michigan

SB610, the lifting of the SBS and SBR ban, has passed out of the House Judiciary Committee and headed to the House Floor. Apparently there was an amendment to the bill so it will ave to go back to the Senate after passing the House but it is still moving.

This is a real improvement in Michigan law and lets Michiganians join about 40mother states that do not ban possession of SBRs and SBSs as long as you comply with Federal law.

In addition to the SBR/SBS legalization, there is a packet of bills to reaffirm that firearm records are confidential, not FOIAble, and only available to peace officers for proper purposes and disclosures in violation of the law would be a misdemeanor and a second violation will be a felony. Excellent.

Michigan's Supreme Court has already held that Concealed Pistol License Information is not subject to FOIA, but it is nice to see this both reinforced and expanded by statute to all firearms records along with some real teeth for violations.

Two very good proposed laws indeed, and it is worth politely contacting your Representative and asking them to support and vote for passage of both these reforms.

It's Always In The Last Place You Look

Hidden fortress found under Alcatraz

Previously thought to have been destroyed, it turns out that the Civil War era fortress was instead buried under the prison.

From The Detroit Free Press:

A surprising find under what used to be America’s most notorious prison: Texas A&M researchers using ground-penetrating radar have discovered the remains of an old military fortress long believed to have been completely destroyed, reports the BBC.

. . .

The radar has revealed old fortifications along with buried magazine buildings and tunnels dating from long before the main prison building was erected in 1915.

Yet another neat find, and an excavation of the prison's parade ground should turn up some interesting parts of the fortress.

Meanwhile, it looks like another lost fort, Fort Caroline, thought to have been in Florida may instead have been in Georgia all this time.

Some people lose their keys, but it takes a country to lose entire forts....

But, But, He's An Expert!

A cautionary tale of what happens when a scientist steps outside of his specialty to pontificate.

The Detroit Free Press: Can giant walls protect the U.S. from tornadoes?

Sounds like a great idea right? But in a word, no.

One scientist thinks we can protect parts of the central United States from ferocious tornadoes by building several gigantic walls across Tornado Alley:

“If we build three east-west great walls in the American Midwest .... one in North Dakota, one along the border between Kansas and Oklahoma to the east, and the third one in south Texas and Louisiana, we will diminish the tornado threats in the Tornado Alley forever,” according to physicist Rongjia Tao of Temple University.

The walls would need to be about 1,000 feet high and 150 feet wide, he said. Tao is presenting his research next week at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver.

Apparently there's a fair bit of healthy skepticism regarding this plan:

Naysayers abound. Aside from the cost of $60 billion per 100 miles (according to Tao’s estimates) and huge engineering challenges, “it wouldn’t work,” tornado researcher Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., said in an e-mail.

Brooks said that China has deadly tornadoes despite the east-west mountain ranges there. In addition, he said, tornadoes still occur in parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri despite the presence there of smaller east-west mountain ranges similar in size to Tao’s proposed walls.

“If his hypothesis was true, we’d already have the thing he wants to build naturally,” Brooks said.

“This is essentially a case of a physicist, who may be very good in his sub-discipline, talking about a subject about which he is abysmally ignorant,” Brooks said.

Another expert, meteorologist Mike Smith of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions, also called the theory “nonsense.”

Global warmists that similarly think they have all the simple answers, take note.

A further reason beyond those given in the article as to why this will never work: Even if it could work, we can't even build a comparatively small wall across our southern border.

Anyone really think we would be able to build a series of 1,000 foot high, 150 foot thick walls stretching for hundreds of miles? The environmental impact stage alone would take decades and the cost overruns would push this into the trillions.

The Mysterious Mummies Of The Tarim Basin Reveal the World's Oldest Examples Of Cheese

The Tarim Basin Mummies, located in China, have already turned a lot of what was thought to be known about Bronze Age Chinese history and cultural transmissions on its head when it turned out that the mummies were not ethnic Chinese but instead Western Eurasians. The mummies have just revealed another interesting revelation.

An examination of their tombs has produced examples of the world's oldest cheese, apparently produced using by the kefir method and dating back to 1650-1450 BC

The Detroit Free Press: Great Gouda! World's oldest cheese found - on mummies

The combination of dry desert air and salty soil prevented decay to an extraordinary degree. The remains and grave goods were freeze-dried, preserving the light-brown hair and strangely non-Asian facial features of the dead along with their felt hats, wool capes and leather boots. Analysis of the plant seeds and animal tissues in the tombs showed the burials date to 1450 to 1650 BC.

Some of the bodies had oddly shaped crumbs on their necks and chests. By analyzing the proteins and fats in these clumps, Shevchenko and his colleagues determined that they're definitely cheese, not butter or milk. It's not clear why people were buried with bits of cheese on their bodies, Shevchenko says, though perhaps it was food for the afterlife.

The analysis also showed the mummies' cheese was made by combining milk with a "starter," a mix of bacteria and yeast. This technique is still used today to make kefir, a sour, slightly effervescent dairy beverage, and kefir cheese, similar to cottage cheese.

The Tarim Mummies continue to provide interesting revelations about trade, innovation and migration in the ancient world.