THANKFUL FOR HEALTHCARE.GOV
One of the things for which I'm thankful this Thanksgiving is that I'm not Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. That Ms. Sebelius is still HHS secretary is remarkable. If they'd presided over a fiasco like the Obamacare rollout, the CEO of every corporation anywhere in the world would have been fired long ago. Ms. Sebelius is fortunate she works in government, where there is no accountability. And in the Obama administration, where there is no integrity. Breathing new life into the old saw, "close enough for government work," the White House Press Secretary said last week that if Healthcare.gov works 80 percent of the time, the administration will consider it fixed. It's cosmically appropriate he's named Carney, as a carney barker who ropes in the rubes to lose money on his dishonest game. "In what other line of work is 20 percent failure considered a success?" asked Ron Fournier of the National Journal. "If one out of every five meals served by a restaurant is inedible, the joint goes out of business."
RUSSIA RECOLONIZES UKRAINE
"Ukraine in Turmoil," was the headline yesterday (11/26) in the New York Times. And no wonder. Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine is slipping back under Kremlin control, and Ukrainians are deeply angry. Their governments's shock decision to opt for Vladimir Putin's Russia and pull out of EU talks on the eve of a historic deal is a dramatic upset to their freedom - and to the European balance of power. It is the first major defeat for the EU in its eastward march since the fall of Communism. While the region's geopolitics remain fluid, the upset may prove as fateful as the signing of the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654 by the Cossack chief Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who turned his back on the West and agreed to let independent Ukraine be absorbed into the Russian Empire. "Ukraine's government suddenly bowed deeply to the Kremlin. The politics of brutal pressure evidently work," said Sweden's foreign minister Karl Bildt. Here's how they work.
DOES OBAMA WANT IRAN TO HAVE NUKES?
Obama never explained how allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium decreases the likelihood of war. It isn't surprising that the US and the other five powers signed a deal with Iran last Saturday (11/23). Over the past few weeks, US President Barack Hussein Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry made it clear that they were committed to signing a deal with Iran as quickly as possible. And it isn't surprising that the deal these overeager leaders signed with the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism makes the world a much more dangerous place than it was before the agreement was concluded. While the deal isn't surprising in and of itself, Obama's decision to conclude it now makes clear the true goal of his foreign policy. To understand that goal, it is first necessary to consider an aspect of the deal that, on the surface, makes little sense.
IS HE, IN FACT, NUTS?
"After years of trillion-dollar deficits we reined in spending," Barack Hussein Obama told the Wall Street CEO Council last week. "And since I took office, we have now cut our deficits by more than half. "Add it all and businesses like yours have created 7.8 million new jobs over the past 44 months, we've gone farther and recovered faster than most other advanced nations," he said. It must have taken a great exertion of willpower for the business titans to refrain from bursting in laughter. He wasn't trying to con an audience of lo-fo's. To make these claims to the nation's top business execs is evidence of an estrangement from reality that could be pathological.
OBAMA PACKS THE COURT
If you have ever been before a judge for any reason, did you think about whether the judge was appointed by a Democrat or a Republican? Probably not. People expect judges, regardless of political leanings, to be fair and competent -- and for the most part, this expectation has been fulfilled in America, unlike many other places in the world. The action by the Senate Democrats last week, though, to kill the long-standing agreement that required a 60 percent supermajority vote for the confirmation of a federal court judge (with the exception of the Supreme Court) and change to a simple majority vote causes many to fear the increased politicization of the federal judiciary. The immediate cause of the Senate action in changing its rules appears to be the desire of the Obama administration to appoint three new federal judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This court is often viewed as the most important appellate court, in part because many of the cases involving alleged federal government overreach go to that court. That's why Obama wants to "pack" it with liberal judges.
HALF-FULL REPORT 11/22/13
Most any American 60 years or older remembers where they were fifty years ago today. I sure do. For those who lived through it, Kennedy's assassination was traumatic in the extreme. For many of us, what added to the trauma was that he was killed by a Communist, but that somehow it was "right-wing hate" that killed him. The New York Times continues to hawk this libtard logic to this day. What's instructive at this point a half-century later is take the mythologizing of JFK as a warning that should elicit a prayer. ** Freedom took a real hit yesterday (11/21) however, when Harry Reid and 51 other Senate Dems voted to end filibusters. Within hours, Zero celebrated with a Nomination Party, which now means automatic rubber-stamped appointments for the all the Marxist, anti-capitalist, anti-Constitution judges he wants. But Mitch McConnell is a very shrewd guy, and knows the Senate rules like Bobby Sheets Byrd did ** There's bright news, welcoming news, and gratifying news this week. And wait 'till you see -- as in see -- who the Hero of the Week is.
HEALTH FREEDOM AS THE ALTERNATIVE TO OBAMACARE FASCISM
In response to the catastrophic failure of Obamacare - which has only begun and is going to get vastly worse - panicking Democrats are now yelling to Republicans, "Well, what's your plan? At least we're trying the solve America's health care crisis, and all you offer is the repeal of our efforts with nothing as an alternative." At the briefest glance and before actually thinking about the Dem criticism, this seems a valid point. Just where is the Pub alternative to Obamacare? However, there are two completely false assumptions the Dems are making. First is that America has a "health care crisis" in the first place, and second, that it requires a massive government solution - that only massive government intervention in health care can solve the crisis, as the free market has failed to do so. That is the crux of the Democrats' and Obama's argument. If they and he can't make these two assumptions, they and he have nothing left to say. So, let's start by taking both away from them. Then we'll provide the alternative. Ten of them, in fact.
THE DEMOCRATS ARE THE PARTY OF THE RICH
Real (inflation adjusted) median household income last year was $51,371, 4.44 % lower than when Mr. Obama became president in 2009, the Census Bureau says. The number of Americans living in poverty rose by the equivalent of the population of Massachusetts during Barack Hussein Obama's first term. By the time his second ends, "black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category," television talk show host Tavis Smiley said last month. From 2009 to 2012, the top 1% received 95% of income gains, a study by University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez indicated. But during the presidency of George W. Bush, the top 1% garnered just 65 % of income growth, Prof. Saez said. "While the populist rhetoric of modern (Democrat) politicians is all about redistribution and inequality, the reality is that (their) policies entrench privilege," said Walter Russell Mead, editor of The American Interest. So who's the "party of the rich" again?
WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT – ECONOMIC FREEDOM OR POLITICAL FREEDOM?
The Chinese Communist Party is trying to continue pulling off the trick that has served it ever since Deng Xiaoping defeated the Gang of Four: more economic freedom combined with less political freedom. The people can choose any good or service they want - except their government. In many ways it has worked extremely well. In 1978 Maoism had left the country horribly poor: more than half the people of China tried to live on less than a dollar a day. Over the next nine years per capita income doubled, then doubled again over the nine years after that. Many a left-leaning Western politician has been heard to muse about how much better we would grow if only we directed the market economy with the single-mindedness of the Chinese Communist Party. See, they mutter, a paternalistic government is best at generating economic prosperity. Yet this is precisely the wrong lesson to draw from China. It's not because it's unfree at the top that China is growing fast, but because, at least in some respects, it is very free at the bottom. The extraordinary fact is that - economically - the average Chinese person is more free from government interference than the average Westerner.
DOESN’T BARACK OBAMA DESERVE THE SAME FATE AS KEVIN TRUDEAU?
For Democrats and especially their leader, the American people -- including those who vote for Democrats -- are sheep to be sheared, cows to be milked, suckers to be swindled. Exactly as does con-man fraudster Kevin Trudeau. Last week (11/12), a jury in Chicago found Kevin Trudeau guilty of "criminal contempt" for making misleading claims in television infomercials for his weight loss book. The prosecutors cited as false and fraudulent Mr. Trudeau's claims of "easy" and "secret" (secret because of a government and Big Food conspiracy to hide them) techniques that actually called for daily injections of a prescription-required hormone (human chorionic gonadotropin or HCG), a 500-calorie-day diet, and a month of colon hydrotherapy. Trudeau also claimed that after completing the diet, consumers could eat anything they want without regaining weight. These surely are deceptions, but seem mild compared to "if you like your health plan, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep him or her; Obamacare will reduce insurance premiums for the average family by $2,500 a year."