Tag: politics

Wait, politicians lie?

I fail to see how the news that millions of Americans will lose their private insurance under Obamacare is supposed to be any surprise whatsoever:

President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

Barack Obama is easily the least honest president since Richard Nixon. And he has no pressure on him to be honest since he not only has the press covering for him, but relies upon the support of the two most gullible portions of the population. But, let’s face it, this isn’t going to stir any outrage among the “Obama gwan pay mah mortgage” crowd. It may spark a momentary skepticism in a few white urban liberals, but only until someone reminds them that Republicans are evil and racist, at which point they will dutifully abandon their crimethink.

Why Iran – and everyone else – needs nukes

Frankly, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if countries like Switzerland and Sweden began thinking about developing or acquiring nuclear weapons, as apparently that is the only way to convince the USA and/or Israel to mind their own business:

During a panel at Yeshiva University on Tuesday evening, Sheldon Adelson, noted businessman and owner of the newspaper Israel Hayom, suggested that the US should use nuclear weapons on Iran to impose its demands from a position of strength.

Asked by moderator Rabbi Shmuley Boteach whether the US should negotiate with Iran if it were to cease its uranium enrichment program, Adelson retorted, “What are we going to negotiate about?”

Adelson then imagined what might happen if an American official were to call up an Iranian official, say “watch this,” and subsequently drop a nuclear bomb in the middle of the Iranian desert.

First of all, Iran is not an American problem. If Israel genuinely believes such an act is necessary and justified, they have their own nukes. Second, how can this sort of irresponsible talk not increase the determination of the Iranians to get their own nuclear devices operational as soon as possible?

It certainly makes one glad that the presidential candidate Adelson was almost single-handedly financing did not win. No matter how bad Obama is, there can be little question that McCain would have been worse.

Remember this in 2014 and 2016

Republicans give House leader John Boehner a standing ovation for kicking the can one more time:

At the last GOP conference meeting of the two-week government shutdown, no lawmakers went to the microphones to give their take.

Instead, after Speaker John Boehner told Republicans they had “fought the good fight,” they all rose up to offer a standing ovation. “It was one of the easiest meetings we’ve ever had,” says Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina.

“I think he has strengthened his position in leadership,” Representative John Fleming says about Boehner. “He hung in there with us. He’s been reluctant to go to these fights and now that we have stood up and fought for our values and he’s been there with us, leading, I think his stock has risen tremendously. He has great security as our leader and our speaker.”

The message from Boehner and majority leader Eric Cantor was unity, with warnings not to point fingers of blame.

“Everyone in this room ran on the Republican ticket,” Cantor told colleagues.

“We all agree Obamacare is an abomination. We all agree taxes are too high. We all agree spending is too high. We all agree Washington is getting in the way of job growth. We all agree we have a real debt crisis that will cripple future generations. We all agree on these fundamental conservative principles. . . . We must not confuse tactics with principles. The differences between us are dwarfed by the differences we have with the Democratic party, and we can do more for the American people united,” he told them.

Walking out of the meeting to the throng of reporters, the conservatives kept to that script, but the moderates drew their knives out for the Right.

Representative Peter King of New York urged more Republican officials to speak up about Senator Ted Cruz and “condemn him for what he did.”

Representative Aaron Schock of Illinois said the lesson of the episode was that Boehner should cut out the far-right flank and work with centrist Democrats.

The Republican Party is neither a conservative nor a small government party. It is not a pro-Constitutional party either.  And I think dh and Ross Douthat are both wrong with regards to the failed attempt by the “far-right flank” to stop the credit madness. It did accomplish one very important thing: it forced the bi-factional ruling party to reveal itself in public.

The USA is one of the very few Western nations that doesn’t have a viable third party. They have grown up faster in Europe thanks to a) the parliamentary system, and b) the European Union forcing the bi-factional “left-right” parties to expose themselves to their euroskeptical populaces. And the USA desperately needs an alternative to the Demopublican-Republicrats.

Obama summons his storm troops

Apparently if the Republicans don’t offer unconditional surrender, the administration is prepared to unleash the EBT hordes in order to put more pressure on them:

When over the weekend, a Xerox “glitch” shut down the EBT system, better known as foodstamps, for nearly the entire day across 17 states leaving millions without “funding” to pay for food leading to dramatic examples of the basest human behavior possible, some of the more conspiratorial elements saw this merely as a dress rehearsal for what may be coming in the immediate future. While there was no basis to believe that is the case, a USDA (the currently shuttered agency that administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) memo obtained by the Crossroads Urban Center in Utah carries in it a very disturbing warning for the 46+ million Americans currently on foodstamps.

To wit: “understanding the operational issues and constraints that States face, and in the interest of preserving maximum flexibility, we are directing States to hold their November issuance files and delay transmission to State electronic benefit transfer (EBT) vendors until further notice.” In other words, as Fox13News summarizes, “States across the country are being told to stop the supplemental nutrition assistance program for the month of November, pending further notice.”

If you have any shopping to do at Walmart or anywhere else that takes such cards, you might want to get it in before the looting hordes clean out the shelves.

Front National wins in France

One wonders if the Socialists will try to take a page from the Greeks and ban the French nationalist party as a “criminal organization” before they get booted from office by the electorate.

France’s Front National swept to victory over the country’s mainstream centre-right opposition in a closely watched local election on Sunday in a vote widely seen as presaging big advances by the far-right party in next year’s European and municipal elections.

In the decisive second round of the poll for a departmental council seat representing Brignoles, a town in the south of France, the FN candidate comfortably defeated his rival from the UMP, the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, by 54 per cent to 46 per cent.

The knockout blow came despite calls from President François Hollande’s Socialist party for its supporters and other leftist voters to rally behind the UMP candidate in a bid to block the FN. The left’s candidate in the poll, the incumbent Communist, was easily knocked out in the first round of the election last weekend.

Marine Le Pen, FN leader, called the vote “a great victory”. She cautioned that it was only a local by-election, but added: “This shows a desire for change among the French people, who are making their voices heard, who are mobilising. It augurs towns gained and hundreds, maybe thousands of municipal councillors [for the FN in next March’s local elections].’

The FN, riding on a wave of recession-fuelled disaffection with the two mainstream parties, is mounting its biggest campaign to date to make gains in both the local elections and the European elections that follow in May. Last week an opinion poll for the first time put the FN ahead in the running for the European poll, with 24 per cent backing the party, giving it a two-point lead over the UMP and five points over the Socialist party.

Manuel Valls, the interior minister, told the Financial Times in an interview last week, that it was possible the FN would emerge as the leading party in the European elections.

Across Europe, the globalists and transnationalists are all but finished democratically. From the UK to Eastern Europe, the trend is clear. Now the question is if they will go gracefully or otherwise, turning to violent, anti-democratic tactics while incessantly screaming “fascist” and “neo-Nazi” at the populist parties.

In the meantime, there isn’t any mystery about the growing mass appeal of Marine Le Pen and the Front National: 

 “I will negotiate over the points on which there can be no compromise. If the result is inadequate, I will call for withdrawal. Europe is just a great bluff. On one side there is the immense power of sovereign peoples, and on the other side are a few technocrats.”

Asked if she intended to pull France of the euro immediately, she hesitated for a second or two and then said: “Yes, because the euro blocks all economic decisions. France is not a country that can accept tutelage from Brussels.”

As I wrote in June, the Front has been scoring highest in core Socialist
cantons, clear evidence that it is breaking out of its Right-wing
enclaves to become the mass movement of the white working class.

Vive le franc! The Euro is finished once France turns against it.

Failing at surrender

Only the Republican Party could manage to try to surrender and then fail at it:

President Obama used his weekly radio address to reject the latest offer from House Republicans to end the fiscal stalemate. The outline of their proposal was released Friday and would have reopened government through December and lifted the debt ceiling for six weeks.

Heckuva job, Johnny! One wonders what master backup plan grand strategerist of the House Republicans has up his sleeve.

There is no default

I’m not the biggest fan of Powerline, given their full-throated preference for all things Republican rather than conservative, but Hindrocket has provided the best explication of why all the talk of a federal “default” is sheer nonsense.

So the question is, if Congress does not raise the current debt ceiling, will the federal government run out of money needed to pay its existing debts? The answer is clearly No. A reader supplies the math: 

 On average the federal government’s daily expenditures are about $16.7 billion; receipts are about $14 billion, implying an average daily borrowing requirement of about $2.7 billion. So the planned flow of revenues is now about $650 billion less than the planned flow of expenses…about $2.7 billion a [business] day, $650 billion annually.

So the “default” scenarios are bogus. Interest on the $16 trillion in debt is covered by a factor of about 10x by revenues! That puts the federal government deep into AAA land. Revenues would have to fall by a staggering 90% to jeopardize interest payments.

And, of course, retiring principal by “rolling over” maturing debt can never require an increase in the debt ceiling, since there is no net increase in the nation’s debt, even if the money used to repay the original principal is borrowed.

So what will actually happen if Congress doesn’t increase the debt ceiling by approximately October 17? The government’s debt obligations will be paid, but reductions in other spending will start to become necessary. In effect, leaving the debt ceiling as is would function as a spending cut. This is why the Democrats hate the idea so much. They know there is zero chance of default, but they are horrified at the prospect that voters and taxpayers may find out that there is a relatively simple way to bring about spending reductions that would create, in effect, a balanced budget. Hence the hysteria.

If Republican senators and representatives give in to the Obama administration for fear of a nonexistent threat of federal “default”, which is actually a real threat of reduced federal domestic spending, it will underline the fact that they have no genuine reason to exist.

As Rand Paul and others have pointed out, there are 10x more tax revenues than are required to pay the interest on the debt. It is absurd to say the Federal government is in any danger of debt default than to say a man who makes $10k per month is in imminent danger of losing his house because he has to make an $850 mortgage payment every month.

UPDATE: Apparently the minor fact of the threat being nonexistent wasn’t sufficient to prevent the leading Republicans from aggressively pursuing surrender:

House Republican leaders said Thursday they will offer a temporary increase in the federal debt ceiling in exchange for negotiations with President Obama on longer-term “pressing problems,” but they stopped short of agreeing to end a government shutdown now in its 10th day.

In a news briefing following a closed-door meeting of House Republicans to present a plan to raise the debt limit for six weeks, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said, “What we want to do is offer the president today the ability to move a temporary increase in the debt ceiling.” He described the offer, to be presented to Obama in a White House meeting with House Republicans on Thursday afternoon, as a “good-faith effort on our part to move halfway to what he’s demanded in order to have these conversations begin.”

Boehner did not immediately provide specifics of the plan. But the speaker made clear that House Republicans are not agreeing to Obama’s demand that they pass legislation to fund the government with no partisan strings attached, thereby ending the first government shutdown in 17 years.

To scare the Left

I love that the name of this painting is STAND YOUR GROUND.  It represents everything that the Left is against: Freedom, America, Guns, Whites, Men, Masculine Strength, Morality, and Self-Defense. To say nothing of Art that isn’t government-funded, anti-traditional, and readily confused with a child’s fingerpainting.

I should like to see what the artist could do with the subject MOLON LABE. It appears the Third Revolutionaries may have their own Jacques-Louis David.

The sham of democracy

The gloves are coming off and faux democratic secularists around the world should expect no quarter or mercy from the next duly elected Muslim government to take power somewhere in the Arab world:


An Egyptian court
on Monday banned the Muslim Brotherhood from carrying out any
activities in the country and ordered the seizure of the group’s funds,
widening a campaign to debilitate the Islamist movement of deposed
President Mohamed Mursi.

“The court bans the activities
of the Muslim Brotherhood organization and its non-governmental
organization and all the activities that it participates in and any
organization derived from it,” said the presiding judge Mohammed
al-Sayed.

The court ordered the government to seize the Brotherhood’s funds and administer its frozen assets. The
army-backed government is waging the toughest crackdown in decades on
the Islamist group, which says it has a million members. Security forces
killed hundreds of its supporters and rounded up thousands more since
Mursi was deposed by the army on July 3 after mass protests against his
rule.

The Brotherhood won parliamentary and presidential elections after veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in 2011.

So, what Turkey and Egypt have taught the Muslim fundamentalists is that if they play by the rules, win popular support, and get duly elected, the secular elite will utilize the military to overturn the elections, ban them, and deprive them of their accumulated assets.

But at the same time, that same secular elite is going to encourage them to settle all throughout the West. So now we have a large group of people who have learned that there is absolutely no point in being restrained by the laws and have no legal alternative to violence, and are being actively aided in spreading as far and wide as possible.

This should end well.

And it is an object lesson to everyone who asserts that the democratic system is the correct and proper way to manifest societal change. It isn’t.  Beyond a certain point, the will of the people is observably not permitted.  Now, I have no sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood, but I have to question the idea that it is wise to make it so abundantly clear to everyone, particularly those who are quite willing to turn to violence, that there is absolutely no benefit to participating in a democratic system.

It is, technically, true

Obama points out that raising the debt ceiling does not, in itself, increase the national debt:

Raising the debt ceiling doesn’t increase the nation’s debt, Pres. Obama declared in a speech today. In a speech at the Business Roundtable headquarters in Washington, D.C., Obama dismissed concerns about raising the debt ceiling by noting that it’d been done so many times in the past:

“Now, this debt ceiling — I just want to remind people in case you haven’t been keeping up — raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy.  All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you’ve already racked up, Congress.  It’s a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.”

Obama went on to suggest that “the average person” mistakenly thinks that raising the debt ceiling means the U.S. is racking up more debt: “It’s always a tough vote because the average person thinks raising the debt ceiling must mean that we’re running up our debt, so people don’t like to vote on it, and, typically, there’s some gamesmanship in terms of making the President’s party shoulder the burden of raising the — taking the vote.”

It’s true.  Just like increasing your credit limit on your credit card doesn’t increase the amount of money you owe; you don’t owe more money until you go out and spend more.  However, the fact that you are asking for a higher credit limit does, in most circumstances, indicate that you intend to spend more money than you presently can.

I’m going to miss the Obama administration.  I knew it would be amusing and incompetent, but I had no idea he would take it to this level.