Saturday, July 05, 2014

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES is up. As usual, here's my favorite:

STOP GLOBAL WARMING! Eat your vegetables and quit farting.
MEMO TO THE LEFT: It's hard to boycott businesses you don't patronize in the first place. Money talks; moral superiority whines.
MORE GOVERNMENT OVERREACH: It was a toy, now it's a drone.
NINE-NIL: Even his own side on the Supreme Court won't support him.
USEFUL IDIOTS: The Democrats Provide the IRS the Best Defense Money Can Buy.

If all the government unions can buy is idiots, that's just another reason to disband them....
PLASTIC BAG FANTASY ISLAND vanishes like Atlantis: Scientist corrects million-ton floating estimate. He was only off by a factor of around 100 ... but that's good enough for government work.
THE DARK SIDE OF LIBERALISM: "[F]or many contemporary liberals, individual rights are whatever the government decides they are, not the inalienable possession of every individual."
THE STOLEN JOB MYTH: Immigrants aren’t taking jobs that ‘belong’ to Americans. Jacoby's analysis is (at least to me) a bit overwrought, or underwrought, depending on which side of the immigration fence you reside.

Either way, the jobs debate is only a small part of the real immigration issue, which is this: Is the United States a nation? Or a refugee camp with benefits?
GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS: Antarctic sea ice is growing — because of global warming. But in May, the Antarctic ice sheet was melting. Was that because of global cooling?

I wish the environmentalist climate mongers would make up their minds....
REP. TREY GOWDY (R-SC), sponsor of the "Enforce the Law Act," gave an very passionate speech defending the need for legislation that would authorize the House or Senate to sue the executive branch for not enforcing laws. Here is that speech.


A FEW WEEKS before she retired, my wife had a couple of workplace 'accidents', resulting in a bruised ego and a bump on the noggin. Neither incident cost her (or her employer) so much as an aspirin or a bandaid, and she missed not a minute of work.

Yet within a couple of days of each, she received a "Notification of Injury Letter Follow Up - Claimant PIN for WebFile" from the Virginia Workers' Compensation Commission. Here's how it reads in part:
Recently, the Commission was notified of a work-related injury where you were listed as the Injured Worker/Claimant. Listed above is your PIN - Personal Identification Number - which enables you to log in to the Commission's WebFile system. WebFile allows you to see your claim, view claim-related documents, and protect your rights by filing a Claim Form. A Notification of Injury has also been sent, containing information required for viewing your claim online. You will need both these documents to access WebFile.
This reads - to me, at least - as almost a demand letter from an ambulance-chaser: You must have had an injury requiring financial compensation. You must file a claim so we can evaluate your loss (otherwise we may no longer have jobs).

What has this world come to when one is expected - no, almost demanded - to file a workers' compensation claim for a non-injury that didn't even require a bandaid, much less time away from work?
AMMO GRRRLL on America's "rape culture".