ObamaCare Train Wreck Update

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Three bits of ObamaCare news today:

Half of all ObamaCare statutory deadlines have been missed.

Forever 21 is cutting the hours of some of their employees to 29.5 per week to avoid ObamaCare mandates.  These people were advised yesterday, August 18th, that their health benefits will terminate as of August 31st.

More than 100,000 New Jersey residents in a program for low-cost health insurance will lose their coverage because their plan doesn’t cover all the whistles and bells mandated by ObamaCare.  They’ll be lucky if their replacement plans only cost twice as much.

Did you vote for Obama?  Then be ashamed.  This is just a horrible thing…and it is horrible because Obama and leading Democrats cobbled together a pile of legislation and passed it without reading it or thinking through the consequences.

The Failure of Democracy

Mark Noonan70 Comments

Which is worse:  a democracy where minorities are oppressed or a dictatorship where minorities are protected?  Before you answer that question, do keep in mind that every single human being on earth is in the minority at some point – whether its because of your gender, skin color, religion, political beliefs or what have you, at some juncture in your life there are more of them than there are of you.  All of us are minorities and thus all of us are a potential target for a democracy ruled by demagogues – ruled by those who single out a minority as the source of evil which must be destroyed. 

In a very real sense, the primary purpose of government is to protect minorities – because only when minorities are protected can justice be said to exist to any extent, at all.  It doesn’t matter how democratic a nation is or how regularly it votes – if a minority is being oppressed, then it is an unjust society and the government is not carrying out its primary function.  Government must ensure that each of us – especially when we are in the minority – are as far as possible allowed to go about our lives without let or hindrance from anyone else.  Given this, better, say, a military dictatorship which will protect all the minorities than a democracy which deliberately attacks some minorities.

Of course, vastly better than either is a government of free people which also protects minorities.  Once upon a time, our government was the best example of that humanity had ever devised.  It is in tatters and shreds right now – so bad that the government is deliberately breaking the law in the matter of the debt limit, domestic spying, ObamaCare implementation and other matters and hardly a peep is raised about it.  But it is still to some extent in existence – we are still partially free; partially protected in our minority rights, that is. 

What is happening in Egypt should send a chill down our spines – because that is what democracy becomes when people are convinced that a vote of the majority rules all.  The Morsi government won the election fair and square and proceeded to do whatever it pleased – because “the people” had said so.  Of course, it wasn’t all of the people – the people will never be unanimous.  There will always be a minority which doesn’t agree – and the first duty of the government, even if supported by 99% of the people, is to ensure that the 1% disagreeing get what they want, even (and especially) if that is no more than to be left alone.  In the United States there are plenty of Americans who now think like the Morsi supporters:  they’ve won the election and so they get to do whatever they want and the minority must knuckle under.  That, however, is a failure of democracy – a failure to understand that we have a democracy not to determine what everyone must do, but to ensure that everyone can do as they wish, as far as practical.

For democracy to work there must be built in to it massive prohibitions against government action – for the very purpose of ensuring that a transient political majority doesn’t get it in their heads that victory at the polls is last word in government.  Our Bill of Rights is our primary bulwark against the failure of democracy.  What many people – mostly on the left – don’t understand is that if they don’t keep up the bulwarks, then the whole thing will come crashing down in to revolt and eventual civil war.  Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed – but, remember, only their just powers.  Just powers cannot be all powers because all powers cannot be granted to the government for the simple reason that not all people will consent to it.

I urge everyone not to tempt fate.  Do not push things too far.  Resign yourself to the fact that people will disagree and will have a right to disagree even to the point where you are offended.  We are straying very close to a precipice right now – our government has grown arrogant; our political pressure groups think they are invincible.  Some people are thinking that “history” is on their side, again (the Nazis and Communists thought that, too).  Democracy is failing – here and around the world – because in too many lands a temporary majority thinks it has the right to re-order everyone’s lives.  Stop it.  Now.  And let democracy be a success, again.

Our Incredible, Static Debt

Mark Noonan8 Comments

This report from CNS states that while we were running a $98 billion deficit for the month of July, the national debt – per the Treasury – remained at exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00 during the whole month.  This is $25 million below the legally authorized debt limit.

This is, also, not mathematically possible – the Treasury Secretary did advise Speaker Boehner as of May 17th – when our debt officially hit the number it stayed at all through July, and is still at as of yesterday – that Treasury would be putting in to place “extraordinary” measures to keep the debt below the legal limit.  What are these extraordinary measures?  Not made clear – likely because it is just another word for “lie”.

It is simply not possible that our debt could remain exactly the same over this period of time – it would have to go up or down.  Given the amount of spending we’re doing, “down” is not at all likely, and so it is almost a certainty that it has gone up…and probably vastly more than the $25 million gap between reported figure and legal limit.  So, Treasury is almost certainly lying about how much we owe and borrowing money it cannot legally borrow…and no one in Congress is calling Treasury on it; neither are the financial markets.  A massive lie is being treated as if it didn’t exist by all of the Ruling Class on this country.

Such is the sad state of affairs we live in – a bankrupt country run by cowards, liars and crooks.

And some might wonder, still, why I want a revolution – peaceful, to be sure; at the ballot box, of course (and as our Founders intended); but a revolution, nonetheless.  The entire Ruling Class has to be turned out and new people, new ideas and new laws made to ensure that the truth is what governs our nation.

You Want $15 an Hour for Flipping Burgers? There’s an Ap for That

Mark Noonan23 Comments

From Singularity Hub:

No longer will they say, “He’s going to end up flipping burgers.” Because now, robots are taking even these ignobly esteemed jobs. Alpha machine from Momentum Machines cooks up a tasty burger with all the fixins. And it does it with such quality and efficiency it’ll produce “gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices.”

With a conveyor belt-type system the burgers are freshly ground, shaped and grilled to the customer’s liking. And only when the burger’s finished cooking does Alpha slice the tomatoes and pickles and place them on the burger as fresh as can be. Finally, the machine wraps the burger up for serving.

And while you fret over how many people you invited to the barbecue, Alpha churns out a painless 360 hamburgers per hour…

Might need just one employee just to monitor the machine…and, hey, they can even pay him $20 an hour…still doesn’t work out too well for the 90% of fast food workers who will be laid off.  Careful what you demand people, you just might get what you ask for…

The Hasan Debacle

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Mark Steyn is cutting, as usual, in his discussion of the Hasan trial – he concludes his piece:

…He’s admirably upfront about who and what he is — a “Soldier of Allah,” as he put on his business card. On Tuesday, he admitted he was a traitor who had crossed over from “the bad side” (America’s) to “the good side” (Islam’s). He has renounced his U.S. citizenship and its effete protections such as workplace-violence disability leave. He professes loyalty to America’s enemies. He says, “I am the shooter.” He helpfully informs us that that’s his gun. In this week’s one-minute statement, he spoke more honestly and made more sense than Obama, Gates, Casey, the Armed Forces Court of Appeals, two judges, the prosecution and defense lawyers, and mountains of bureaucratic reports and media coverage put together.

But poor old Hasan can say “Yup, I did it” all he wants; what does he know?

Unlike the Zimmerman trial, Major Hasan’s has not excited the attention of the media. Yet it is far more symbolic of the state of America than the Trayvon Martin case, in which superannuated race hucksters attempted to impose a half-century-old moth-eaten Klan hood on a guy who’s a virtual one-man melting pot. The response to Nidal Hasan helps explain why, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, this war is being lost — because it cannot be won because, increasingly, it cannot even be acknowledged. Which helps explain why it now takes the U.S. military longer to prosecute a case of “workplace violence” than it did to win World War Two.

Steyn is right – Hasan is the admirable person in this trial.  He’s quite clear on who he is, what he did and why.  We, on our side, look like a sick and twisted combination of idiot and coward.  I’m not quite sure what is best in dealing with Hasan – shooting him is logical (I’m opposed to the death penalty in principal but traitors during wartime pretty much ask for their own deaths), but there is something to be said in denying him “martyrdom” and growing old and dying, long since forgotten, in prison.  But whatever we do with him, we’ll still look like cowardly idiots.

In spite of the fact that he’s clearly 100% guilty as charged and there is abundant and indisputable evidence to prove this, it has taken years to bring him to trial.  He should have been tried as soon as he got out of the hospital post-shooting.  There was the beard issue which took a lot of time – a dispute as to whether or not Hasan should have to adhere to Army regulations about beards (the are forbidden).  Tie him down and shave him – though, of course, had we tried him in a rational time frame he wouldn’t have been able to grow such a full beard.  The man, in court, is clearly stating he’s guilty – and yet the trial goes on, rather than the sentencing.  Once he is sentenced, there will probably be years of appeals.  With a little luck, we’ll wrap this up a couple years before Hasan dies of old age – unless we exchange him for someone the Islamists kidnap meanwhile.

In the endless post-mortems of France’s defeat in 1940, one thing which rarely came out in the analysis is the actual reason the Germans were able to conquer France in 6 weeks:  the people of France, with a few shining exceptions, were yellow to the bone.  They were simply afraid to fight.  There are a large variety of reasons the heroic France of 1914 turned in to the cowardly France of 1940, but the fact remains that if they’d had some guts in 1940 the war would have gone very differently.  I worry that we have become like that, too – simply afraid to fight…with our fear stemming from a lack of faith in our cause; we don’t believe that we’re any good any longer, that we have to right to be here…that we’ve never done anything worthwhile and so our enemies are right to attack us.  For crying out loud, we’ve got a traitor who joined the other side and massacred our soldiers here on our soil – and we can’t even swiftly and correctly deal with something as cut and dried as that…small wonder we’re at our wits end with what to do about the larger issues.

We’d better get some courage back, and right quick.  The vultures are circling…

McCain’s Folly

Mark Noonan1 Comment

From PJ Media:

In the eyes of tens of millions of Egyptians, Senators John McCain’s and Lindsey Graham’s recent words and deeds in Egypt — which have the “blessing” of President Obama — have unequivocally proven that U.S. leadership is aligning with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egyptian media is awash with stories of the growing anger regarding this policy…

…What did McCain do and say in Egypt to earn the ire of millions of Egyptians?

Most offensive to Egyptians — and helpful to the Brotherhood’s cause — is McCain’s insistence on calling the June 30 revolution a “military coup.” In reality, the revolution consisted of perhaps thirty million Egyptians taking to the streets to oust the Brotherhood. McCain is either deliberately misconstruing the event, or believes the story as told by Al Jazeera and Ambassador Anne Patterson. In this narrative, at least an equal amount of Egyptians did support Morsi, and the military simply overthrew him against popular will. Al Jazeera has actually broadcast images of the millions of anti-Morsi protesters and identified them as pro-Morsi protesters, disinformation which was quickly adopted by Western media…

I don’t know what is motivating McCain – lingering belief that “politics ends at the water’s edge” might be it…though you’d figure a man who spent years in the Hanoi Hilton and ended up a veteran of a lost war would understand that its been many decades since the American left (now led by Obama) believed that politics ends at the waters edge.  Continued ire at Rand Paul’s brand of foreign policy – which is considered by McCain to be a replay of the pre-WWII isolationism – is probably playing a role.  And, of course, there is McCain’s desire to shine in the Ruling Class – to be the “Maverick”, which in liberalese is “Republican who will do our bidding”; to be written up in glowing terms in the MSM; to be interviewed by sympathetic MSMers on TV who will give him a chance to take a swipe at fellow Republicans.  But whatever the motivation, it is complete folly.

It is, of course, secondary to Obama’s folly – but that we take as a given until January 20, 2017.  For Republicans the problem is that with McCain and others out there giving cover to Obama, it becomes harder for us to both distance ourselves from Obama’s failures and, more importantly, to craft the radically new approach to foreign policy which is necessary because of Obama’s follies and the rapidly changing conditions around the world.  This isn’t the Cold War (and yet Obama still negotiates arms control agreements with Russia as if it still were); this isn’t even the post-Cold War (a brief moment in time between 1989 and 2001 when we could have re-ordered the world to our heart’s content, but didn’t).  This is a new era – a new ear of international anarchy resultant upon the end of America’s complete predominance.  We are still, by very far, the most powerful nation in the world (any nation  going to war with us – absent Obama as President – would be committing national suicide) but we are no longer able to act as we wish and when we wish and we are confronted with the challenges of Islamism and rising Chinese imperialism.  These elements have the makings in them of World War Three and we need to craft policies which will head that off…or, if that can’t be done, ensure we are in the best possibly position to win the war.  Obama’s policies are working, blindly, towards such a war while at the same time putting us in an ever worse position…McCain coming along and giving Obama cover on this is disastrous.

My view about Egypt is slightly hopeful – I fully understand that a lot of the anti-Muslim Brotherhood people are really just the Even More Muslim Muslim Brotherhood types…people who make the MB look tame by comparison.  But, still slightly hopeful – the last thing we need right now is a policy where we blunder about in Egypt while the people there are working out their destiny.  Quiet support for genuinely secular parties in Egypt, silence on actual political developments, a curtailment of US military aid (though not a complete cut-off…we want to make certain the troops remain paid so that they are less likely to revolt; mostly, stop sending them planes, tanks and other sorts of weapons) and watch developments.  We’ll soon know who winds up on top in Egypt – and if we had played our cards right, we might even have started with good will from an anti-Islamist Egyptian government.  Now we’ve just pissed everyone off..the MB for not firmly backing Morsi; the More Muslim Muslim Brotherhood because they are just creeps; the democratic forces because we are undermining them.

No Republican should have anything to say about Obama foreign policy except criticism – because it is stupid and destructive policy.  But we should hardly spend much time on that – we should spend most of our time thinking about what really needs to be done and then arguing for the changes we want.  It is a pity that McCain has decided to cap his political career – I believe it unlikely he’ll run again – by doing one, last disservice to his nation.  Better to stay home and be silent, Senator McCain, then to bookend a hero’s life with the story of how he helped Obama ruin things.

Is Going Golfing the Normal Response to a Pending Enemy Attack?

Mark Noonan65 Comments

Ok, so just after we learn the NSA is spying on us, that the Benghazi scandal is worse than we thought and that the IRS scandal is right outside the Oval Office door, we get this story that al-Qaeda is about to launch the biggest attack since 9/11…politicians and talking heads are everywhere saying the threat is specific and credible and so specific that we have to close 21 embassies and consulates for a week…so, “specific” means we’ve narrowed the attack down to 21 possible targets over a 7 day period?  Meanwhile, Obama goes golfing and appears on Leno – just the sort of thing you’d expect from a leader who has specific and credible evidence on an impending enemy attack.

With this Administration, our default position has to be that they are lying unless proven otherwise – right now, I see no actual evidence of any particular pending attack (though, of course, the enemy is out there, getting stronger and does want to attack us) which justifies the story that we’re about to be hit 9/11-style and so 21 facilities have to be closed.  Leaving aside the fact that if this is true then the Administration is leaking operational intelligence (you don’t tell your enemy who is about to attack that you are in on the secret – you lay your plans to thwart and counter-attack and then hit him when he’s not expecting it), this whole thing seems to be cooked up (perhaps out of general intelligence which is likely always out there of possible terrorist attacks) to (a) deflect attention from scandals; (b) make it look like the NSA spying program is vital; (c) make Obama – who’s foreign policy is in shambles – appear that he’s on top of things.

The world watches and laughs at the vaunted United States of America…run by fools, crumbling in power and wealth and unable to influence the course of events.

The Gipper

Cluster31 Comments

50 years later, and still no one has articulated the downside to big government better than the Gipper.

Folks, since 1964 this country has spent over $15 trillion dollars on eradicating poverty and today, the poverty statistics are the same if not a little worse. It was reported not too long ago that 4 out of 5 American families are one missed paycheck away from poverty, yet every year and every campaign, big government politicians, particularly Democrats, run on helping the poor – do you believe them anymore? Do you really think more money will cure the problem? Do you honestly believe they want to solve the problem?

The other day Mersault understandably was frustrated over the VA health care administration, to which I remind everyone that is what government health care is – a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy ran by bureaucrats focused more on file organization and lunch breaks than the administration of care, and that is what we are all in for with Obamacare. No one has ever been able to explain to me how adding an additional layer of bureaucracy to an industry can bring down costs.

Welfare, disability, unemployment and labor force measurements are all at alarming levels, so my question to big government advocates is – how is this working out for you?

Global Warming Hoax Update

Mark Noonan89 Comments

From Climate Depot:

Unprecedented July Cold – Arctic Sees Shortest Summer On Record

“Normally the high Arctic has about 90 days above freezing. This year there was less than half that,”  says Steven Goddard website.

I know, I know – the cold in the Arctic is due to Global Warming – except for the increased CO2 caused by racist, sexist, homophobic, straight, white males, the Arctic would have just been as cold as usual this year…

UPDATE: Walter Russell Mead weighs in on the Greens, in general:

…Global greens develop stupid, horrible, expensive, counterproductive climate policy agendas, and then try to use the imprimatur of “science” as a way to panic the world into adopting them. All too often, in other words, they fall prey to the temptation to make what the science says “clearer than truth” in Acheson’s phrase, in order to silence debate on their cockamamie policy fixes. A favorite tactic is to brand any dissent from the agenda as “anti-science.” It is not only a dishonest tactic; it’s a counterproductive one, generating new waves of skepticism with every exaggeration of fact…

This is, of course, all true – but Mead is still a “warmist”; he believes it is happening and that human actions might play a role in this.  The reason Mead believes this is because he works on the assumption that there is some element of honesty and rationality on the left.  For all his knowledge and excellent analytical skills, Mead hasn’t woke up to the fact that the left – in its leadership – is corrupt to the bone.  All they want is power and wealth for themselves and they’ll use whatever bit of BS that comes to mind to obtain it.  I don’t know that warming is happening, at all – I think we haven’t sufficient data on temperature and on the internal workings of the global climate to determine if its warming, cooling or staying the same (though I doubt it is staying the same – it seems to me that fluctuation is rather built-in).  Because people in responsible positions assert that it is happening, people like Mead work on the assumption that such people are not necessarily full of ****.  Trouble is, they are.  The wise man, in 2013, works on the assumption that anyone on the left in a leadership position who makes a statement is lying until proven otherwise.

Think about it – they say they care about families.  Then why implement policies which destroy families?  They say they care about the workers.  Then why implement policies which make it harder to create jobs which will go to the poor?  They say they care about education.  Then why implement policies which make it ever less likely that a child after 12 years in school will be literate?  They say they care about women.  Then why implement policies which ensure that more of them will be aborted?  On and on it goes – what they say they want is directly attacked by the policies the espouse.  The explanation:  they are in it for themselves and it is more likely that they’ll gain personal power and wealth – without having to earn it – if they advocate policies which are actually destructive.  Like this:  you can work for a living, or you can live off those who will pay you in order to keep a corrupt, unionized bureaucracy in power over education.

So it is with the environment – liberals say they want to clean it up.  Ok.  So lets go full bore in to nuclear power, natural gas, clean coal and other technologies which will provide us abundant, cheap and clean energy.  Nothing doing, say our liberals – they want to go in for solar and wind which are ineffective, massively expensive but which provide all manner of opportunity for graft (on both ends – corrupt “green energy” companies get government subsidies in return for providing donations and well-paid sinecures for liberals on the make).  The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is, at best, weak – and yet this lack of evidence, cleverly parlayed by propaganda, has been used to give massive new powers to liberals while also enriching liberals.  That it isn’t happening and that their proposed solutions will only make things worse doesn’t matter…they’ll just keep at it because they are narrow minded, greedy and self-centered (in short, what they claim we are – projection is not at all unconscious in the left: it is deliberate, a means of deflecting attention away from their corruption and failure).

But here’s our real problem – a good portion of those who should be on the side of the angels (like Mead) simply haven’t grasped the fact that the nice, articulate and oh, so friendly liberals they socialize with are con artists…who know how to turn on the charm and present a bright face, at need (they also know how to turn the wicked, gangster face on, too…a good con artist will switch from one to another with great ease).  To be sure, in the lower reaches of liberalism you don’t find con artists as often as you find dupes…but even there, it is dupery with a purpose: a low level liberal knows that if he toes the party line, rewards will follow.  But on top – nothing but liars on the make.  Understand that, and the battle becomes crystal clear.