To know what is wrong over there, check out the word I used on the thread's title just before "Train Wreck"...

Britain's Green Party has called for the ouster of climate change sceptics within the British government, in what critics have called a 'quasi-fascist' move to force the issue.
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, whose party has one Member of Parliament in former leader Caroline Lucas, specifically targeted Conservative government ministers Owen Paterson and Eric Pickles, demanding that those who refuse to accept "the scientific consensus on climate change" should be removed from the positions.
Australian-born Bennett told the BBC that "...those are situations that cannot be allowed to continue in government. People need to accept the reality and need to act to take the choices we need to deal with climate change".
When asked if her comments were being interpreted correctly, and if she really meant that every senior government adviser, even those not linked to environmental issues, should be removed for their climate change scepticism, Bennett responded, "Yes... we would ask the government to remove them."
But her comments have been slated as 'quasi-fascistic' by leading climate change sceptic Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Peiser, speaking to the Express, said, "[Sacking climate change sceptics] is a quasi-fascist policy. Do they want a ministry of climate change truth to vet every member of the Government? They might have to torture them to find out if they are a sceptic or not. It's a policy you would get in the Soviet Union."
Bennett's comments come as Professor Mat Collins, an expert in climate systems at the University of Exeter, dismissed claims that Britain's recent flooding was a result of climate change, but instead a result of the jet stream being stuck further south than usual.
Prof. Collins told the Mail on Sunday: "There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge."

http://youtu.be/DHivCQQShNA

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/02/17/Greens-want-ouster-of-cabinet-climatesceptics

Twitter Inc. said the Venezuelan government blocked users’ online images as opposition groups marched through Caracas for a third day, demonstrating against record shortages and the world’s fastest inflation.

Nu Wexler, a Twitter spokesman, confirmed yesterday in an e-mail that the government was behind the disruption. …

In the absence of information from the government or local television outlets, Venezuelans have turned to foreign reporters and social media for news. Twitter users had been posting their photos of demonstrations that started in provincial towns earlier this month, providing an alternative to state-controlled media. It’s unclear if photos were blocked for users of all Internet providers in Venezuela, Wexler said. …

“We are having a media blackout,” Josefina Blanco, a freelance science journalist and social media user, said in an e-mail from Caracas. Only because of Twitter, NTN24 and radio station RCR 750 “ can we know what is really going on in our streets,” she said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-14/twitter-says-venezuela-blocks-its-images-amid-protest-crackdown.html

[...]
They don’t lead to better hiring outcomes, as Google learned. Its senior vice president for people operations, Laszlo Bock, said last June in an interview with New York Times, “…we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

Such hiring practices also disadvantage women. They hurt the employer by limiting the talent pool.  They fortify the male-dominated, frat-boy culture that Silicon Valley is increasingly being criticized for.

Telle Whitney, CEO of Anita Borg Institute, which is working on getting more women to study computer science and have more women fully engaged in creating technology, says its research shows questions such as these cause women to get screened out more often than men. As an example, the superhero concept is going to resonate much more with men, as demonstrated by the demographics of the superhero movie attendance.  Whitney cites research which shows that a strong and pervasive stereotype of computer professionals as devoid of a social life alienates women. Subtle cues in the physical environment of companies such as Star Trek posters and video games lead to women being less interested in being a part of an organization when compared to a neutral office environment. This causes women to self-select out of technology jobs.

Indeed, the trend is getting worse. In 1985, 37 percent of computer science undergraduate degree recipients were women. By 2011 this proportion had dropped to 18 percent. Most technology firms refuse to release gender and diversity numbers. Data collected on Github explains why. Dropbox, for example, had only 9 women in its 143 person engineering team as of October 2013. That’s 6.3 percent in an industry in which 18 percent of the hiring pool is women.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/16/dropboxs-hiring-practices-explain-its-disappointing%E2%80%8B-lack-of-female-employees/
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The comments say it all.

President Barack Obama offered the desperate farmers and farmworkers of the drought-stricken Central Valley a desultory relief package last week: $1 billion for a "climate resilience fund," plus "summer meals" and various other kinds of aid. For a president who boasts of his willingness to use executive action, it was a pathetic display of sophistry, full of mumbles about how water management is not a "zero-sum game"--though in this case, it is.


As the Investor's Business Daily and countless others have noted, water management in California is a trade-off between the needs of farmers and the demands of the environmental movement, which has embraced the delta smelt, an obscure endangered species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta. The Democrats, and Obama, have supported the environmentalists over the farmers--and the subsequent flushing of California's reservoirs.

It may be true that the delta smelt is a species on which the whole regional ecosystem depends, and that its disappearance could have a negative effect on fishing, among other impacts. But that calls for wise management involving all stakeholders--not the blunt instrument of the federal courts, which utopian environmental activists have used precisely because they do not want to have to face the real challenges of water conservation.

Predictably, Obama used his appearance in Fresno to tout climate change as the cause of the drought, as well as to offer spending on climate change as the solution. It is precisely because of a hyperfocus on climate change, however, that there has been no progress on solutions to California's water problem. Both the state and federal governments have been seized with a potential problem rather than a glaring resource management issue.

The same seems to be somewhat true of the policy community. At the Rand Corporation, which is based in Santa Monica (full disclosure: my wife is a Ph.D. Fellow at the Pardee Rand Graduate School), policy analyst David Groves has done valuable work on the challenges facing California water management as a result of climate change. However, at a lecture in 2011, he warned his audience: "Unfortunately, I don't have the silver bullet solutions to climate change for California's water problems. I'm sorry if that's why you were coming today."

Groves does have some useful advice, however. In a report prepared in 2013 with Evan Bloom for the California Department of Water Resources, he suggests that increasing the efficiency of water use, as well as improving the state's existing water infrastructure, can best mitigate the impacts of a warmer, drier future for California.

The only way that current water management processes might succeed, he suggests, is if precipitation increases--an unlikely outcome. (Perhaps President Obama, who seemed to promise on the campaign trail in 2008 that he would be able to change global weather, has something like that in mind when he claims water is not a "zero-sum game.") So, Groves implies, it is necessary to change current policy. But Obama is offering no new ideas.

Climate change has proved a diversion from the practical scientific and political problem of managing water problems that scientists say have nothing to do with rising global temperatures. There has been little movement on developing new reservoir infrastructure, or upgrading old management to deal with new environmental concerns without cutting farmers off entirely. That is why the president's "aid" merely adds insult to injury.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/16/Planning-for-Climate-Change-Has-Made-California-s-Water-Crisis-Worse

In quite a few cases, they end up killing millions of humans...

I am not really sure why we should have expected anything but this conclusion from a system that will be disrupted by Bitcoin. The way I read this report is "We looked closely at this bitcoin stuff and we need all our political clout to stop it or we are doomed. We made fun of it at its start but our core tech guys are saying now "Yeah! That thing has legs". Making fun of it did not work so now we need to attack, attack attack... But indirectly as we do not want to be seen as openly going against the most advanced technological idea since Gutenberg, and thus against future tech investments. Operation "Kill Tesla's Free Energy" is back again people!"

The Department of Homeland Security is set to activate a national license plate tracking system that will be shared with law enforcement, allowing DHS officers to take photos of any license plate using their smartphone and upload it to a database which will include a “hot list” of “target vehicles”.

The details are included in a PDF attachment uploaded yesterday to the Federal Business Opportunities website under a solicitation entitled “National License Plate Recognition Database.”

The system will “track vehicle license plate numbers that pass through cameras or are voluntarily entered into the system from a variety of sources (access control systems, asset recovery specialists, etc.) and uploaded to share with law enforcement” in order to help locate “criminal aliens and absconders.”

In other countries that have activated license plate tracking networks, such as the United Kingdom, political activists have been targeted by having their vehicles added to a “hotlist” after attending protests. One example led to a man being questioned under anti-terror laws after he traveled to take part in an anti-war demonstration.

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/02/13/homeland-security-activate-national-license-plate-recognition-database/

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Are we there yet? To BigBrotherville?

Exactly one year ago in Utah, a Republican state senator introduced a bill that imposed new regulations on how license plate readers (LPRs) could be used in the Beehive State. That bill was signed into law on April 1, 2013.

As Ars has reported before, these scanners, which have been increasingly deployed in cities and towns across the US, can read, analyze, and store 60 plates per second. Typically, the LPR checks an unknown plate against a "hot list" of wanted or stolen vehicles. But the tricky part is that LPRs aren’t just looking for suspected bad guys. They almost always record and retain the time, date, and precise location of every license plate scanned, often for years or longer.

[...]
“License plates contain no private information whatsoever”

In the companies' 16-page complaint, which was filed in Utah federal court on Thursday, DRN and Vigilant seek a "permanent injunction against the application or enforcement of the Act." They state that prior to the law’s passage, DRN sold a total of 10 LPR camera kits to five repossession and towing companies operating in Utah; those cameras began operation between May 2010 and February 2012.

The alleged First Amendment violation, the plaintiffs argue, occurs because taking a photograph is constitutionally protected. "The State does not have a substantial interest in preventing persons from viewing or photographing license plates—or from disseminating the information collected when doing so—because license plates contain no private information whatsoever," argue the plaintiffs. "Moreover, the photographic recording of government-mandated public license plates does not infringe any 'privacy' interest that concededly is not infringed when the photographer views the plate. Thus, the State cannot carry its heavy burden to demonstrate that it has a substantial interest that is served by the Act."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/private-firms-argue-first-amendment-right-to-collect-license-plate-data/

You know you could actually sell pizzas based on your story. People sold burgers with less credentials than you based on their story..

You could be like the Buffalo Bill of Bitcoin, on tours, etc...

All transactions from the Taxes/Gov on a ledger. Even black projects Area 51 style (but obviously black so no one would know). People would be more in touched with where their taxes are going, if they are moving or not, etc.

That could be a small step. 

39 shades of gray areas... 39 new ways of getting sued for not making a cake or refusing to be a photographer on a wedding...

39 new ways of getting in trouble by the very people you support because...
http://www.thewrap.com/piers-morgan-transgender-guest-janet-mock-peeved-twitter-response-interview-cnn-video


Nature decided that We! Are! The 98%! #OccupyEvolution


Nothing can change that. Not even a virtual facebook page with virtual facebook friends.

As a former combat commander, I can tell you that fear is difficult to avoid on the battlefield. But on today’s battlefields, a new fear haunts our troops: the fear of persecution by their own government. That fear leads to internal hesitation. And that leads to death.

Billy and Karen Vaughn, parents who know the pain of having their warrior son betrayed write on Breitbart.com “U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan are now forced to fight a two-fronted war. Before each deployment, these soldiers understand fully that day after day they will do battle against relentless terrorists with shifting loyalties and unspeakable hatred. But what none of them could have foreseen was the killing field that would open from their rear: the Continental United States.

Our government’s incessant tightening of already restrictive ROE (Rules of Engagement), compounded by the failed COIN (Counterinsurgency) strategy—also known as “winning hearts and minds”—has made an otherwise primitive enemy formidable.”

http://allenbwest.com/2014/02/us-military-deaths-afghanistan-skyrocket-obama/
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The saddest part is none of those so called anti war people or the media will call on obama and point to those numbers. Because first black DEMOCRAT president. Because Hillary 2016. Because Bush's fault.

Mass Obamacare Exchange Chief Breaks Down In Tears Describing Train Wreck Website, Says There Are 50,000 Applications Sitting In A Pile…


The head of the state’s beleaguered health insurance marketplace, which was once a national model, broke down in tears Thursday, as she described how demoralizing it has been for her staff to struggle with a broken website that has left an unknown number of people without coverage.

Jean Yang, the executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, wept at a board meeting, where it was disclosed that 50,000 applications for health insurance are sitting in a pile, and have yet to be entered into a computer system.

Each one of those applications requires two hours to process, adding to a mountain of work facing Connector staff as they scramble to prevent people from losing insurance, officials said.

“These people came here to lead and innovate, and instead they’re doing manual workarounds, and they are embarrassed to tell friends and family that they work for the Health Connector,” Yang said at the board meeting. [...]

The state’s health insurance website was working smoothly until October, when it was revamped to comply with the more complicated requirements of the federal health care law. Since then, it has been bedeviled by error messages and is often very sluggish or crashes entirely, officials said. That prompted the state to resort to old-fashioned paper applications, and to put many people in to temporary health plans. But an unknown number of others may be uninsured because of the paperwork backlog.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/02/13/facing-application-backlog-insurance-marketplace-chief-breaks-down-tears/7kvMWfZMczLqsNKQOTE69I/story.html

The specific regulation is on page 124 of this PDF from the Federal Register. It stipulates that the full exemption for the mandate applies if “the employer does not reduce the size of its workforce or the overall hours of service of its employees in order to satisfy the workforce size condition”–that is, if it doesn’t fire workers to get below 100:

A reduction in workforce size or overall hours of service for bona fide business reasons will not be considered to have been made in order to satisfy the workforce size condition. For example, reductions of workforce size or overall hours of service because of business activity such as the sale of a division, changes in the economic marketplace in which the employer operates, terminations of employment for poor performance, or other similar changes unrelated to eligibility for the transition relief provided in this section XV.D.6 are for bona fide business reasons and will not affect eligibility for that transition relief.Legal or regulatory changes that affect the cost of labor would fall into the category of “changes in the economic marketplace in which the employer operates.” So it would be more precise to say that employers may cut back employment for any bona fide business reason except to take advantage of the ObamaCare mandate delay.

The administration thus acknowledges that its policy creates a perverse incentive and orders employers not to act upon it. But that can’t be enforced. A business will take into account all relevant factors, including the additional costs imposed by ObamaCare, in making decisions about hiring and firing, including whether to terminate employees for poor performance, sell a division, etc. In practice, the new rule is a ban–under threat of criminal liability–on acknowledging the perverse incentive. Call it OmertàCare, a government-imposed conspiracy of silence.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304888404579378833508471324?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

The director of Colorado’s health exchange has been placed on administrative leave after the state discovered she had been indicted for stealing from a non-profit, the Denver Post reports:

[Christa Ann] McClure, 51, pleaded not guilty Feb. 6 in federal District Court in Montana to eight counts of theft and fraud from a nonprofit housing agency in Billings.

She was indicted Jan. 16 and notified her current Denver employer, the state-sponsored health exchange, on Monday, a few days after the story broke in Montana media, Connect for Health spokesman Ben Davis said in a telephone interview.

Connect for Health performed a criminal background check and checked references before hiring McClure in March, Davis said.

“She was completely clean,” he said. Her position as executive director of Housing Montana of Billings, he said, made her well-qualified for her post as Connect for Health’s director of partner engagement — she was liaison with state and federal partners, such as Medicaid officials. The job pays $130,000 a year.

… McClure, who has not been convicted of any charges, should have informed Connect for Health much earlier of the accusations she was facing, Davis said.

McClure was released pending trial, now scheduled for June. Each of the counts in the indictment against her carry potential penalties of five, 10 or 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

The 12-page indictment alleges that, while serving as executive director of the federally funded Housing Montana, McClure, between 2008 and 2010, paid herself “significant sums” for consulting services, although she was already on the payroll as a full-time employee.

She also made payments to her family and used federal money for personal travel, to pay family bills and to buy consulting services, the indictment alleges.

She also is accused of charging homeowners for a $750 warranty that did not exist, converting a laptop for personal use, inflating the hours she was to be compensated and writing herself a $21,000 check to which she was not entitled.

The indictment did not specify the total amount she allegedly embezzled.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/371043/colorado-health-exchange-director-indicted-fraud-theft-jillian-kay-melchior

(Spanish CNN) -  The Venezuelan government issued an order to arrest the opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, for his alleged role in violent incidents on Wednesday during the protest marches that left three dead and dozens injured, according to the website daily El Universal , published a photo of the arrest warrant 007-14.
Judge 16 Control of Caracas, Ralenys Tovar Guillén, accepted the request to make the Attorney General to detain the former mayor of Chacao and ordered the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin) apprehend and pave his residence, according to El Universal, citing sources court.
CNN in Spanish were unable to confirm this independently.

http://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2014/02/13/ordenan-la-captura-de-leopoldo-lopez-segun-reporte/

In the serene private clubs of Caracas, there is no milk, and the hiss of the cappuccino machine has fallen silent. In the slums, the lights go out every few days, or the water stops running. In the grocery stores, both state-run shops and expensive delicatessens, customers barter information: I saw soap here, that store has rice today. The oil engineers have immigrated to Calgary, the soap opera stars fled to Mexico and Colombia. And in the beauty parlours of this nation obsessed with elaborate grooming, women both rich and poor have cut back to just one blow-dry or manicure each week.

Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, is a leading candidate for next collapsed state. …

Inflation is running at over 50 per cent, a raging black market buys dollars at more than 10 times the official rate, domestic industry has all but shut down; there are critical shortages of many consumer staples, including corn flour for arepas, the national breakfast. TV stations – now all state-controlled – are full of ads that alternately denounce capitalism or show square-shouldered actors talking about how they don’t hoard and buy only what they need. Billboards boast of how socialist Venezuela has never been stronger; yet almost no one has toilet paper in their bathrooms.

The apocalypse hasn’t come yet. “The crash never comes because Venezuela has an insurance other countries don’t have – one of the largest oil reserves in the world,” said Jorge Roig, president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce. Venezuela’s economic indicators defy logic, he said, but the international thirst for oil has postponed the day of reckoning.



http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/venezuelas-economy-on-the-edge-of-the-apocalypse/article16845406/