The Joys Of Obamacare

Cluster7 Comments

I just received the fabulous news that my premium has gone up another 31% on top of the 22% increase last year. When I called my provider, to inquire about the increase, I was told that due to mandates of the ACA this increase was necessary, and that I may actually lose my plan at the end of this year because my plan is not 100% ACA compliant. That is of course provided the President doesn’t change his mind again and make more unilateral changes as he is known to do.

Many of you may remember our President’s 2008 campaign promise:

“I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.”

Well I can tell you from a personal experience, I am paying now more than $3,000 per year for my healthcare insurance. Not surprising, a recent poll indicated that:

Almost 9 in 10 respondents said Obamacare would be “important” in determining their vote, and 60 percent said debate on the health care law should not be over.

We need to get rid of this law, we need to get rid of this President, we need to electorally wipe out progressives, and we need bring back that “shining city on the hill”! So I don’t know, or care who the GOP candidate is in your district – vote for him or her, because any Democrat in any district in any state, only becomes a tool for the progressive agenda. It’s that simple.

I will also make one more obvious observation – the VA IS single payer Government Healthcare, so the problems we are seeing with that, is what we all have in store if we don’t shed ourselves of this cancer. No pun intended – well ok pun intended.

 

More Guns, Less Boko Haram

Mark Noonan4 Comments

When the rest of the world is only offering you a Twitter hashtag in support, you some times have to take firm action to protect  yourself:

BAUCHI, Nigeria — Villagers in an area of Nigeria where Boko Haram operates have killed and detained scores of the extremist Islamic militants who were suspected of planning a fresh attack, the residents and a security official said.

Locals in Nigeria’s northern states have been forming vigilante groups in various areas to resist the militant group who have held more than 270 schoolgirls captive since last month.

In Kalabalge, a village about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the Borno state capital of Maiduguri, residents said they were taking matters into their own hands because the Nigerian military is not doing enough to stem Boko Haram attacks.

On Tuesday morning, after learning about an impending attack by militants, locals ambushed two trucks with a gunmen, a security official told The Associated Press. At least 10 militants were detained, and scores were killed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to give interviews to journalists. It was not immediately clear where the detainees were being held…

I have a friend who is from Nigeria and upon a time we were discussing his home country – which even though he has become an American, he still loves very much and he has a lot of family still living there. After a while, I asked him why the people of south Nigeria put up with it?  Why not just kick the mostly-Muslim north out of the country and have done with it? Nigeria is pretty evenly divided north and south, after all – and the guys who are causing all the ruckus are mostly from the north. Get rid of them, get rid of a large part of the problem.  My friend told me that after the Brits cleared out, the people of the south went to school and learned how to make and build – the people of the north joined the army and learned how to oppress and steal, and they won’t let the south out because the south has the oil.  If the south leaves, the north will have nothing to steal and no one to oppress.  And, so, rather stuck.

It occurred to me after that conversation that the solution, if we want to help Nigeria, is to figure out a way to arm Nigerian militias for local defense in the south. Help the people there just defend themselves and maybe either the north will go away, or will at least become a bit more respectful of the people of the south and won’t steal so often, nor kidnap little girls.  This action by the “vigilantes” (as they are described in the MSM article) is the way to go – and we should offer SEALs and other expert trainers to the Nigerian communities along with sufficient arms and ammunition.  Do that, and over a rather short period of time, the problem there will be resolved, one way or the other.

Creating More Conservatives

Cluster178 Comments

John Hawkins over at Townhall wrote an excellent piece here about conservative outreach and how badly the GOP has been at it over the last decade or so. I completely agree with his game plan which includes, but are not limited to:

1) We’re not reaching out to people who disagree with us

2) We’ve gotten lazy about making people’s lives better

3) We need to focus more on entertaining than informing

4) We get too impressed by the “more conservative than you” game

5) We refuse to challenge liberal control of cultural institutions

This dove tails nicely with my opinion I expressed the other day of “dumbing down” our message and going into precincts we usually avoid. It also speaks to the strategy of incrementalism which we need to employ, and employ now. Considering the utter economic and social disaster that progressive policies have brought about, winning the short term by taking the Senate this fall should be a no brainer, but winning the long term will require a more methodical strategy, and I think Hawkins has identified 5 good starting points. I am curious as to what other conservative have to say on this, so have at it.

 

If We Win the Senate

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Then things will change – and change quite a lot. From the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. Senate failed to advance another piece of popular bipartisan legislation late Monday, and the reason tells the real story of Washington gridlock in the current Congress. To wit, Harry Reid has essentially shut down the Senate as a place to debate and vote on policy.

The Majority Leader’s strategy was once again on display as the Senate failed to get the 60 votes to move a popular energy efficiency bill co-sponsored by New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Ohio Republican Rob Portman. Mr. Reid blamed the defeat on Republican partisanship. But the impasse really came down to Mr. Reid’s blockade against amendments that might prove politically difficult for Democrats.

The Nevadan used parliamentary tricks to block energy-related amendments to an energy bill. This blockade is now standard procedure as he’s refused to allow a vote on all but nine GOP amendments since last July. Mr. Reid is worried that some of these amendments might pass with support from Democrats, thus embarrassing a White House that opposes them.

In the case of Portman-Shaheen, Republicans had prepared amendments to speed up exports of liquefied natural gas; to object to a new national carbon tax; to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency’s war on coal plants; and to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline. A majority of the public supports these positions and many Democrats from right-leaning or energy-producing states claim to do the same. The bill against the EPA’s coal-plant rules is co-sponsored by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin.

Yet the White House and Mr. Reid’s dominant liberal wing won’t take the chance that a bipartisan coalition might pass these amendments, most of which the House has passed or soon would. President Obama would thus face a veto decision that would expose internal Democratic divisions. So Mr. Reid shut down the amendment process. Republicans then responded by refusing to provide the 60 votes necessary to clear a filibuster and vote on the underlying bill…

You understand that?  As was true back when Clinton was President, the GOP has a lot of very popular proposals which would be very difficult for the President to just outright veto.  But unlike back then, we only control half of Congress – and to ensure that the President is not confronted with either vetoing popular legislation or enraging his cronies or far-left supporters, Reid has essentially crippled the Senate’s ability to move legislation.  We don’t really have partisan gridlock – we have Reid-lock.  Senate Majority Leader Reid, desperate to protect Obama, has made the legislature unworkable, thus sparing Obama difficult decisions and allowing Obama to use his pen and phone to advance policies which would be deadly politically if voted on in the Senate.

If we win this November, however, things will change – a GOP-led Senate will be able to advance legislation to the White House, which would either force Obama to sign popular bills opposed by cronies/liberals, or veto them and face the wrath of the electorate (in this case, in the form of weakening Democrat prospects for 2016 with the risk that a GOP President in combination with a GOP Congress would undo Obama’s legacy). It would be quite a pickle for Obama to be in – he’d have to either surrender, or suffer crushing defeat of his ideology in 2016.

This is why it is so crucial for us to win in 2014. The debate will change – it won’t be “partisan, Teabagger Republicans” causing the problem as legislation dealing with all our pressing issues (with input from Democrats – meaning we won’t be able to just get all we want) regularly arrives at Obama’s desk.  Then the ball is in his court and he’ll have to do what he hates most: make hard and fast decisions that he is clearly accountable for.

It’ll be endless fun.

Conflict of Vision – Part Deaux

Cluster26 Comments

Retired Spook wrote an excellent article about a week ago laying out the differences between the left and right in terms of the polarizing vision each side has for our country and while I agree with that premise completely as it relates to the elite of the left, I think our differences with the masses of current leftist voters is simply a conflict of intelligence. I honestly don’t think that the masses of LIV’s really understand what they are voting for, and have been propagandized to the point of being so misinformed that laying out the conservative position and actually having it penetrate their skulls will be a tall task, but an important one. The Democrats have been extremely effective in dumbing down their messaging and reaching the LIV in easy to understand albeit completely inane sound bite policies, ie; “the war on women”, “tax breaks for the rich”, “equality”, etc., etc.. It will be important for conservatives, and for this country, that we reach these LIV’s with a message that will resonate and I believe that will require not only going into precincts conservatives would usually stay away from, but also speaking in terms the LIV can understand.

How about pointing out the 50% unemployment rate amongst black males 18-25 years old and calling it the “war on Black Employment”? How about pointing out the $500 billion cut in Medicare to fund the ACA and calling it “the war on Seniors”? Or how about pointing out the low labor participation rate and the drop in average income and calling it “the war on prosperity”?

We have to reach the LIV’s in 2016, and we have to hold progressives accountable for screwing up this country. All ideas should be seriously considered, no stone should be left unturned, and the gloves need to come off. The future of our country depends on it.

#BringBackOurGirls and the Death of Heroism

Mark Noonan19 Comments

As we recently passed the 69th anniversary of the end of the Second World War (you might have heard of it; a rather significant historical event – even though it took less time for us than did building the ObamaCare website) I have been re-reading Cornelius Ryan’s excellent A Bridge Too Far, which details the “Market-Garden” campaign in Holland in late 1944. Ryan, who wrote several excellent books about major World War Two battles, has a deft way of both showing the utter horror of war as well as showing the sublime courage it took for American and allied forces to win it. One scene in the book, as American paratroopers are landing deep behind enemy lines, has a fighter plane being shot down by the Germans.  The pilot crash-lands his plane close to the American paratroopers, hops out of the wreck and immediately demands a weapon, saying, “I know just where that Kraut SOB is and I’m going to get him”, and off he charges after his enemy.  It seems to me that we, as a people, lack just a bit of that spirit.

Boko Haram has been around for a while, though for our liberals it seems that the group just sprang, fully armed, out of the ground last week – and likely is the result of racist, sexist Teabaggers in the United States.  Without a doubt, if there is something to all this, it is Bush’s fault. As I’m sure everyone is aware, the outrage which finally made even liberals notice was the kidnapping of several hundred Nigerian school girls, with the Boko Haram thugs announcing their plans to tell the girls into slavery (apparently at a bit less than $14 a head, at current exchange rates). While the MSM is careful about concealing the fact that Boko Haram is a Muslim terrorist group closely aligned with al-Qaeda (and, of course, has been massacring Christians in Nigeria for many years), even the bare-bones facts of the case are outrageous. The reaction of our liberals, from Obama on down, has been vigorous – they immediately started a Twitter hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls.  The theory is that the global shaming of Boko Haram will get them to realize the error of their ways and release the girls; but even if that doesn’t work, at least liberals who participated in the hashtag will feel that they did something to help, in much the same way that feeling sorry for a drowning man will excuse one from throwing him a rope, I guess.

Mark Steyn has nailed the whole problem we have here in his recent column, #BringBackOurBalls. Do read it; we here in the West have simply lost our spirit. Here are hundreds of sweet, innocent girls taken by beasts in human skin and our immediate reaction is not to send in military forces to kill the beasts, but to morally pose with a Twitter hashtag – and actually think we are doing something.

The West has a very large problem – we seem to lack the spirit to live. If we do die as a civilization it won’t be because someone stronger than us came along, but because we committed suicide.  When faced with clear evil, we refused to fight. 69 years ago, we charged eagerly at men who were doing evil. Now we stand shivering to one side, hoping that we’ll be left in the enjoyment of our toys at least through our own lifetime.

The Anticipated Demise of the Democratic Party

Cluster12 Comments

Aside from President Obama, the second most dangerous person to the health of our country both economically and socially would without question be Harry Reid. Harry has been on a tear lately explaining how the Koch Bros. are responsible for everything wrong in the world, while at the same time, extolling the virtues of other politically engaged billionaires like Tom Steyer. Harry is quickly becoming a national joke but as conservatives, we should applaud his efforts and urge him to continue. Take for example his recent denial of the Keystone Pipeline despite bi partisan and union support:

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., used a parliamentary maneuver to block a bid by pipeline supporters to include the pipeline measure in an energy efficiency bill moving forward in the Senate.”

Harry will almost single handedly assure GOP victory in November, but let’s not discount past efforts by that mental giant Nancy Pelosi and of course our fearless leader, including but not limited to:

Obamacare – recent findings have discovered that many duplicate enrollees have been counted helping boost enrollment figures, and that only 80% or so of those enrollees have actually made a payment. Even still, the ACA remains as unpopular as ever, and will probably decline in popularity considering events that still have yet to unfold – namely the employer mandate:

“Local business owners might be hoping the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandates cover sticker shock. The law’s employer coverage mandate doesn’t take effect until 2015, but early plan renewals are starting to roll in. And for some businesses, the premium jumps are positively painful. Local insurance brokers are reporting spikes ranging from 35 percent to 120 percent on policies that renew from July to December.”

Benghazi – despite the left’s very vocal efforts to stop everyone from paying attention to this, last week’s email discovery resulting in this week’s special committee is not good news for the Democrats. The fact is that Benghazi was over run by terrorists, and because of previous attacks earlier in the year on the consulate, and that other ally countries had pulled out of the area, we knew an attack was pending, we failed to protect our people, and then the administration lied about it for political reasons.

IRS – not a good week for Lois Lerner, nor the administration and it will soon become public knowledge that there was a concerted effort to deny conservative groups tax exempt status that goes very far up the chain, and when Obama tried to pin it on “just a few rogue agents in Cincinnati” making “boneheaded decisions” – he was being less than truthful, which seems to be a pattern with this administration.

Add these three major issues to the .1% first quarter GDP growth, the loss of 800K people in the labor pool, the historically low labor participation rate, high gas and food prices, and the foreign policy mess, and it’s easy to see that the demise of the current far left Democratic party is imminent and that is a funeral I look forward to.

A Retired Admiral’s Take on Benghazi

Retired Spook5 Comments

The following is a letter that was re-printed in a military newsletter I get from a retired navy admiral to Bill O’Reilly regarding the entire Benghazi affair.  I originally posted this at the end of the recent Benghazi thread.

Mr. O’Reilly,

I am mad as hell because the truth about how combatant commanders and the department of state can and should protect embassies is not being clearly explained. The fact is that there are policies, precedent, resources and procedures that could and should have prevented the embassy in Benghazi from coming under attack, or defended it if it did come under attack, or vacated it if the threat was too high. The ongoing discussion on your show and elsewhere that centers on the video and subsequent cover up is necessary as is the discussion about whether or not we should have responded during the attack. But those discussions have not brought to light the fact that none of this should have happened in the first place.

Fact: The combatant commanders, in this case AFRICOM, have access to our national inventory of intelligence community resources as well as international resources in order to thoroughly understand the risks and threats in any part of their Area of Responsibility (AOR). The complete picture of what was happening in Libya should have been known by AFRICOM leaders and this should have been briefed up the chain daily.

Fact: The first two cornerstones of AFRICOM’s mission are (1) Deter and defeat transnational threats posed by al-Qa’ida and other extremist organizations and (2) Protect U.S. security interests by ensuring the safety of Americans and American interests from transnational threats… In other words it is the mission of AFRICOM to prevent exactly what happened at the embassy in Benghazi.

Fact: The policy is for AFRICOM leaders to work in-conjunction with the state department’s Regional Security Officer (RSO) to establish the threat and then work with the Joint Staff and inter-agency to quickly provide plans and resources to deny that threat.

Fact: There are units specifically designed to bolster security in embassies. The USMC has three companies of Fleet Antiterrorism Security Teams (FAST) and one of these companies (or units from it) could have been deployed to FASTEUR in Rota, Spain, as the risk materialized. Each company has six platoons of 50 men each.

Fact: In July 2003 when I was the J3 at European command (AFRICOM had not been created yet) we had a similar situation develop in Liberia whereby two warring factions were threatening the embassy in Monrovia. The EUCOM team began planning for embassy support PRIOR to Ambassador Blaney’s request. When he did ask for help, we responded immediately, worked with his staff and received SECDEF approval to deploy a single FAST team platoon from Rota to the embassy to provide security. We worked with the Joint Staff and created the mission and structure for Joint Task Force Liberia, an anti-terrorism force based upon USS Iwo Jima and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU).

Fact: Elements from the MEU arrived and relieved the FAST platoon. The warring parties signed a cease fire, the embassy in Monrovia was secured, no Americans were hurt.

So, the questions are:

1. What was the assessed level of threat in Libya prior to the September attack?

2. If it was not considered high then what were the intelligence failures that lead to that wrong conclusion?

3. If the threat was considered high then why wasn’t a FAST team or other resource deployed?

4. What did Ambassador Stephen’s see as his threat and what did he ask for? If he asked for help and was not provided it, that is inconceivable to me. My two bosses at EUCOM, General Chuck Wald (USAF) and General James L. Jones (USMC) would have bent over backwards to provide anything the ambassador asked for and more. They would have leaned on the Joint Staff to provide the authority to deploy and, in fact, during the Liberian situation described above, they were pushing me every day to provide solutions for the Joint Staff to approve. And should anyone forget, this was July of 2003. We were already in Afghanistan and had invaded Iraq just four months before. We were busy but not preoccupied.

Very Respectfully,
Hamlin Tallent
RADM, USN, retired

The admiral raises a lot of good points.  I guess we’ll see where this goes.  At least the right guy is chairing the select committee.  If Congressman Goudy doesn’t have the cajones to get to the whole truth in this matter, then I doubt that anyone can.

 

 

 

The Conservative Media Complex

Cluster5 Comments

You will be wanting to sit down for this one, lest you sprain an ankle falling over laughing. In the CNN opinion page today, Julian Zelizer outlines why Obama just can’t seem to catch a break, and reason #3 is …… wait for it ……. the conservative media complex:

3. The conservative media complex: Conservatives have been enormously successful in building a sophisticated network of media institutions since the 1970s. During the time of the conservative revolution in American politics, the right paid close attention to building an infrastructure on radio, television and the Internet through which to promote their ideas and counteract, what they saw, as a liberal bias in the mainstream media.

The result has been that even though Obama retained control of the White House, conservatives have their own bully pulpit through which to communicate their opposition and analyze news in a way that is unfavorable to Democrats. The President confronts a constant barrage of unfavorable news, literally, regardless of what he does or does not do.

Don’t you love that last line? “The President confronts a constant barrage of unfavorable news”. Un fricking believable. I am amazed that they let this go to print, but they definitely do cater to their own echo chamber, don’t they? What’s really amazing is that NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, CNN, the LAT, the NYT, Newsweek, HuffPo, etc, have been unable to combat this “constant barrage of unfavorable news” coming from the conservative media complex. How incompetent does that make them?

Losing The Hearts And Minds

Cluster10 Comments

What use to be the battle cry for all progressives, is ironically becoming the albatross that will ultimately result in their demise. Progressives are losing the hearts and minds of Americans, and of people worldwide, an occurrence of which is rightfully earned. Progressives have never concerned themselves with real outcomes and actual results of their altruistic policies and self-superior attitudes. Instead, they focus purely on intent and blame others for their failures and maliciously malign and attack those who question the results. Their smug indifference to their domestic political opposition and to our foreign allies has caught up with them and sadly, their response is not to objectively critique their approach, but to double down on their stupidity. As a result, the Real Clear Politic Polls are not kind. A full 63% of respondents state that the country is headed in the wrong direction; a clear majority disapprove of Obama’s job performance; and a majority oppose the ACA, which was passed on a pure partisan vote as a result of questionable side deals. Even some progressives are starting to question the tactics of the current regime as evidenced by this article from Maureen Dowd, and this excellent piece from Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic, of which I quote:

“The tiresome futurism of Obama, his dogmatic views about what this ritualistically ballyhooed century will be like and what it will not be like, are only a part of what lowers his vision. The bigger problem is that the president feels inconvenienced by history. It refuses to follow his program for it. It regularly exasperates him and regularly disappoints him. It flows when he wants it to ebb and it ebbs when he wants it flow. Like Mr. Incredible, the president is flummoxed that the world won’t stay saved, or agree to be saved at all. After all, he came to save it. And so the world has only itself to blame if Obama is sick of it and going home.”

Obama entered the office in 2009 naïve and inexperienced, and even after 6 years, he has still yet to learn how to properly wield the power of the office. Compassionate policies are fine, but if they don’t bring positive results, they are empty and eventually lose favor. Obama’s progressive domestic policies have been an unequivocal failure, and his foreign policy is completely incoherent if not altogether absent. Our foreign adversaries take advantage of his confusion and weakness and our allies are left to forge new partnerships.

America has wandered down a very bad 6 year path here, but there is a chance to chart a new course this November. We have to shed ourselves of the vacuous progressive demagogues who are only interested in their misguided ideals and own self superiority complex, and find people who harbor a sense of humility and a passion to bring about broad positive outcomes for the people of our country and for those people who need our leadership worldwide.