It’s Monday, November 4th, 2013…but before we begin, we note yet another break with tradition, courtesy of an Administration incapable of running a fast-food restaurant. As The Washington Times notes…
Obama diss: President snubs historic Gettysburg 150th anniversary ceremony
It may be little more than a blip on Washington’s radar screen, but President Obama’s decision to be a no-show at an upcoming ceremony to mark the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address has touched off a firestorm in Pennsylvania.
Local newspapers Thursday excoriated the president, a noted admirer of the 16th president, for skipping the historic occasion…
…Twenty-four presidents have visited Gettysburg since the summer of 1863, when the town gained its notoriety after the bloody three-day battle that turned the tide of the Civil War. President Kennedy was invited to speak at the 1963 ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the speech, but opted to travel to Dallas instead, where he was fatally shot a few days later.
We understand the Gettysburg locals are angry because they see dollar bills floating out the window…those they still have left after paying those dramatically-higher health insurance premiums…but the President isn’t bound by any convention to attend the ceremony. What inquiring minds want to know is…
…whether instead he’s headed for Dallas?!?
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, in the “With Friends Like These…!?!” segment, we were struck by the opening of a recent column by Rich Galen, a “Republican strategist” (i.e., cable news talking head) and former press secretary for Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich:
I am not cheering as I write this column. The Presidency of Barack Obama is spiraling downward largely because of Obamacare and it is not clear to me that Mr. Obama can avoid a Presidential face plant.
Earlier this week Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius testified before a House committee about the ongoing disaster that is the Obamacare website. She didn’t know who was responsible or what went wrong any more than she could have pulled out a stack of code three feet high and walked the Committee Members through it line-by-line.
Republicans were ugly to her. Democrats tried to find some way to defend her. They were both wrong.
“Republicans were ugly to her”; and this is a problem…how? Is Galen serious? This entire Administration, indeed, the vast majority of the entire Democratic Party, continually lie to our faces as they move forward with their plan to subvert the Constitution and reconstruct the Republic, and Galen wants the House GOP to…what…offer them s’mores and sing a couple of verses of Kumbaya?!?
Had Galen been around during the Nuremberg Tribunals, he’d surely have chastised the U.S. contingent for their disrespectful treatment of Herman Goering.
We’re in a war, folks; make no mistake about it! And the other side will do and say anything…ANYthing…to win. And the Rich Galens of the world want the GOP to go along to get along, effectively reducing only the speed at which America’s hurtling towards the looming fiscal cliff, without effecting the inevitability the disaster in the slightest.
In a related item, courtesy of NRO, Andrew McCarthy sounds a warning regarding…
Please keep in mind what follows is only a snippet from McCarthy’s full commentary, which can viewed through the links above and below; the entire offering is well worth your time.
…Conservatives, including most of those who were against the New Deal, are not opposed to social welfare for the truly needy. We believe, however, in the constitutional framework, which reserves the promotion of social welfare to the states and the people. Social-welfare policy is not one of what Madison described as “the few and defined” powers delegated to the central government. It is, instead, a paradigmatic power of the sovereign states because, as Madison elaborated, it “concern[s] the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” The Constitution thus enables Congress to tax and spend for the general welfare — on public goods, related to Congress’s carefully enumerated Article I powers, that benefit all Americans; not on redistributionist schemes that fleece some citizens for the benefit of others.
This is not just sound constitutional federalism, it is good policy. Private charity is reliably based on need; it will target the people whose straits are truly dire. Government, to the contrary, is a poor delivery system for social welfare because redistributions of wealth determined by politicians using the compulsory force of law are inevitably made based on political considerations — buying votes — rather than need.
If welfare policy is made at the state level, there are important disciplines in the equation that can prevent the programs from bankrupting the state and unduly punishing productivity. Economic conditions vary widely in a nation of our size, so welfare programs are best designed and run at the local level, by elected officials directly accountable to the people who live with the consequences — officials who can easily alter the programs if conditions change. States know they are in competition with each other, and if wealth redistribution is too onerous in one state, people and businesses can move to others. States and localities also may not print money, and they have incentives (and often constitutional requirements) to balance their budgets that do not exist at the federal level. At the state level, there can be a sensible balancing of “internal order, improvement, and prosperity.”
This is not so at the federal level, as the last 80 years have affirmed. Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are not, as Krauthammer contends, “great achievements of liberalism.” They are prosperity killers — and inevitably so. In part, this is because they have little if anything to do with what Krauthammer describes as the “consensual idea” that “you rescue the elderly and don’t allow the elderly to enter into destitution.” If that were the idea that we all agreed on — and assuming for argument’s sake that we similarly agreed that destitution was a concern of the central government — we would establish a transparent welfare program. That is, we would define what “destitute” is and enact a tax commensurate with what was necessary to provide reasonable relief — structured in a manner that gave people incentives to avoid or escape destitution.
The New Deal and its Great Society successor programs, by contrast, are frauds designed to create permanent dependency on government (and fealty to the party of government). They pretend to be insurance programs, not for the destitute but for all Americans, who pay “contributions” and “premiums” into “trust funds” and derive an “entitlement” to “benefits.” By loading everyone onto the gravy train, even if that meant the poor and middle class would subsidize the rich and near rich, progressives hoped to ensure that no one would object to the arrangement — people would just expect to get theirs in due course…
http://nationalreview.com/article/362259/republican-embrace-welfare-state-andrew-c-mccarthy/page/0/1
In other words, the McCain/McConnell/Boehner wing of the party isn’t concerned with changing the outcome, only delaying the eventual ETA.
So why don’t these just say that? For the same reason The Dear Misleader consistently and repeatedly lied about Americans keeping their health insurance and doctors; if they tell the truth, voters will show them the door…and then they might actually have to work. But the real problem lies not with the corruption on Capitol Hill, but the ignorance of the average American who can likely list all guys the Kardashian sisters have slept with, but couldn’t figure out the ultimate goal of the Unaffordable Care Act.
Franklin Roosevelt once observed, rather disingenuously in our opinion, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
Which is why Progressives have sought, quite successfully, to dumb-down America’s public education system from the days of Woodrow Wilson.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Read more at
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/franklind402955.html#kySyIDsPsqY9jKoH.99Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Read more at
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/franklind402955.html#kySyIDsPsqY9jKoH.99
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/franklind402955.html#kySyIDsPsqY9jKoH.99
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Read more at
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/franklind402955.html#kySyIDsPsqY9jKoH.99
Since we’re on the subject of the dumbing-down of America, writing at the WaPo, Marc Thiessen offers some thoughts on the man who represents Socialism’s crowning achievement:
Obama’s 16 words
Remember George W. Bush’s “16 words” in his 2003 State of the Union address making the case for military action in Iraq? Sen. John Kerry charged that Bush “hoodwinked the American people.” Sen. Hillary Clinton said Bush “misled” the country. And Sen. Barack Obama accused the White House of “shading intelligence reports to support its case.”
Well, now it seems President Obama has his own 16 words to answer for: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.” (Actually, it was a little more than 16 words if you include what the president said next: “Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”)
Obama attempted to move the goal posts in his speech in Boston’s Faneuil Hall Wednesday, declaring that if you like your current health plan, “For the vast majority . . . you can keep it.” Sorry, he didn’t say “the vast majority” back in 2009. He said you can keep your plan. Period. No matter what.
Indeed, Obama repeated this promise on at least 24 separate occasions — before and after the law went into effect. It was critical to his case. Without his 16-word pledge that no one would lose his or her health plans, Obamacare might never have become law.
But Obama’s 16 words were untrue. Across the country, Americans are now seeing their health plans discontinued — and experts say the cancellations could eventually reach 16 million. As one woman in California who got a cancellation letter from her insurer told the Los Angeles Times, “All we’ve been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it . . . I’m infuriated because I was lied to.”
Indeed, there is good reason to believe that the administration not only knew but fully intended for all these people to lose their existing plans. The Health and Human Services Department specifically wrote regulations to ensure that they would — narrowing a provision in the law “grandfathering” in existing plans so that “40 to 67 percent” of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their policies. That’s because moving millions of customers out of the individual and small group markets and into the exchanges is critical to making the scheme financially viable. Indeed, the survival of Obamacare depends on it.
The individual and small group markets are made up largely of healthy people who don’t use a lot of services. The administration needs at least 2 million healthy people who don’t use a lot of services to join the exchanges in order to subsidize coverage for the poor and the sick. If they don’t join, the risk pool gets worse, prices go up, eventually insurers will flee the exchanges — and the whole thing collapses.
While the individual mandate is supposed to coerce uninsured healthy people without insurance to join the exchanges, the problem is that the penalties are too weak — just $95 in the first year. Why would a healthy person who does not think they need insurance pay $55 a month (or $660 a year) for a $6,000-deductible plan when they could just pay a $95 penalty instead?
So the administration needed some way to force currently insured healthy people into the exchanges. How serendipitous, then, that millions of mostly healthy people are suddenly seeing their health plans cancelled. If they cannot afford the skyrocketing prices to keep similar coverage, they have no choice but to join the exchanges. The result? A massive involuntary transfer of Americans out of private health insurance they were happy with into Obamacare plans.
These folks are the marks the administration has targeted to pay for Obamacare. Or they would be, except for one problem the White House did not anticipate: The Obamacare Web site does not work. So now millions of people who will lose their health coverage on Jan. 1 are unable to sign up for alternative coverage through the Obamacare exchanges.
It was Obama’s objective from the start to destroy the market in order to fund Obamacare. He wants these people to lose coverage so they have no choice but to sign up for the exchanges. Obama all but admitted this in his Boston speech. “If you’re getting one of these [cancellation] letters, just shop around in the new marketplace,” he declared. In other words, don’t worry if the plan you’re happy with is being cancelled, just join Obamacare! That was the plan all along.
All of which suggests that Obama’s 16 words were no accident. Or, put another way, “Obama lied and the individual market died.”
Along with four Americans in Benghazi…and uncounted more to come.
Yet despite his gross and obvious shortcomings, as James Taranto notes, in the best tradition of dictators throughout history, Der Obafuhrer cannot dare recognize his limitations:
Deep Background
Politico reports that President Obama has been holding a series of White House meetings with newspaper columnists and other opinion journalists. Although the sessions are private, readers are treated to this scoop:
“The president is thoroughly convinced that the course he has set out is correct, and that his opponents are either wrong-headed or crazy or, in the case of [House Speaker John] Boehner, insufficiently courageous,” said a journalist who has attended off-the-record meetings.
This columnist has never even met Obama, but we could’ve told you that years ago.
As a matter of fact, in our case, as early as 2004.
Meanwhile, if you’re still confused as to where Dimocrats want to take the country, this entry from the Mason Conservative website should serve as a guidepost:
…last night at the Great Falls Grange debate, Democrat delegate candidate Kathleen Murphy said that since many doctors are not accepting medicaid and medicare patients, she advocates making it a legal requirement for those people to be accepted.
She did not recognize that the payments are inadequate to cover the doctors’ costs. She also did not recognize there is a shortage of over 45,000 physicians now and that it is forecast to be 90,000 in a few years. Democrats appear to want to make physicians slaves of the state,…
What? You think they’re going to treat doctors any different…
…from the rest of us?!?
Speaking of twisted webs modern Liberalism requires its adherents to weave, courtesy of Best of the Web, they’re the subject of today’s installment of…
Math Is Hard
Particularly when you refuse to let anyone know how you ever actually did in Math!
“Food stamp benefits will be cut to more than 47 million Americans starting Friday as a temporary boost to the federal program comes to an end without a new budget from a deadlocked Congress to replace it,” USA Today reports:
Under the program, known formally as the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, or SNAP, a family of four that gets $668 per month in benefits will find that amount cut by $36. . . .
In California overall, the cuts will affect more than 4 million residents and will amount to the equivalent of losing roughly 21 individual meals per month, based on calculations used by the Department of Agriculture, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
These numbers, all of which come from the Mercury News report, don’t seem to add up. A reduction of $36 amounts to 5.7% of the stipulated $668 allotment. Assuming a family eats 90 meals a month and is unable to make individual meals cheaper, a cut of 5.7% would reduce the number of meals by only a bit more than five–5.13 to be exact.
The answer must lie in the somewhat cryptic phrase “individual meals.” If a family meal for a four-person family constitutes four “individual meals,” then the numbers work: 5.13 multiplied by 4 comes to 20.52, which rounds up to 21. But in that case the arbitrary standard of a “family of four” makes the cuts sound much more severe than they are. “Twenty-one individual meals per month” sounds a lot more severe than “slightly more than one meal a week.”
Note too that these calculations assume that food-stamp recipients rely on the program to pay for all their food costs. That would appear to go against the spirit of SNAP. After all the S stands for “supplemental.”
And when is a budget cut NOT a budget cut? When it only reduces the rate of increase in the line item, rather than reducing the overall amount of the line item itself…which is the case with EVERY, SINGLE entitlement “cutback” about which the Dims and their MSM shills have ever howled.
On the Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll call it a day with another titillating tale torn from the pages of the Crime Blotter, although this particular item could just have easily been filed under Liberal Idiots on Parade:
Vandal etches signature near William Clark’s at Mont. national monument
Federal officials have launched an investigation after a set of names were found carved into a national monument in Montana where explorer William Clark signed his moniker more than 200 years ago. The new marking on Pompeys Pillar National Monument is about 3 feet from the signature of Clark, a member of the Corps of Discovery expedition that opened a land route to the West. It reads: “Cole + Shpresa 10/10/2013” and includes a heart.
Bureau of Land Management personnel noticed the carving on the sandstone formation during a walkthrough Oct. 17. Someone had to climb over a railing to make it.
Jonathan Peart, director of Friends of Pompeys Pillar, said, “This belongs to all of us. To you, to me to every American out there. And to deface this is just a senseless act of vandalism and violence to something that has historical and cultural importance.” Peart said a silent alarm brought deputies to the monument that day. They questioned and took names from a man and a woman as they left the area, but it wasn’t until a week later when an employee checking the grounds noticed the vandalism.
On Thursday, officials confirmed that Cole Randall and Shpresa Lieshiaj were the couple that was stopped at the historic monument after a silent alarm was triggered. Randall and Kieshiaj are a singing duo in Minnesota that perform as “Flora Cash.” Their website states that they were on a tour of the “heartland” from July 20 through October 17.
Any question as to the political preference of these two brain-deads?!?
Magoo
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