The focus of this article is the fact that Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the person responsible for administering Obamacare, doesn't really understand the laws surrounding implementation of this new set of laws. Going by past Obama appointments, and Obama himself, this is not surprising.
What caught my attention though, was this sentence:
Larry Levitt, health insurance expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said that in setting the sign-up start date the administration had to balance three competing interests: keeping the enrollment period short enough to prevent people from waiting to see whether they developed a health condition that needed insurance; keeping the period long enough to allow consumers to learn about their options; and allowing enough time to have the sign-up system ready for an onslaught of applications.
I thought that one of the selling points of the deceptively named, Affordable Care Act, was that insurers could no longer discriminate against a person with a pre-existing condition.
It seems that while insurers can't, the Obama administration can.
Allen West not backing down from calling Dems "communists"
I wish Allen West was my congressman. Of course, Michigan is such a
blue state these days, both politically and having the economic blues,
he wouldn't stand a chance. And that honesty thing he's got going,
forget it. Kwame Kilpatrick's soothing lies are the ticket here. To make it in Michigan, you need at least one foot in the gutter.
If he ever runs for national office though, he will have my support.
I almost did it this morning, but just as last time when it almost happened, I got up and walked away from the computer. One of my liberal Facebook friends had made another political post. Many of my friends are liberals, and one of my self-imposed rules is to not get into political arguments on Facebook. The only time I break that rule is over Israel. Don't mess with me on Israel. I have spent time on newspaper and magazine comment pages arguing with dopes and hatemongers that I've never met about Israel. I don't always do it, sometimes the comment pages are such cesspools of open Jew-hatred that it's not worth the effort to wade in.
There are Facebook friends who use Facebook as their soapbox for their cause. That's fine. Many of us have a cause. You are welcome to your cause. But when you have over 20 posts per day on your cause, perhaps you should join a group or seek professional help. These are middle-aged adults who should have something better to do with their day. Besides, most of us probably got it within the first five posts. Are you really that dedicated to animal rights that you have to post every petition, and every abuse and rescue story, and every inspirational animal message that you find?
Although I mostly avoid politics, sometimes I will throw up something related to Israel or the occasional Milton Friedman video. If I have a need to expound on a topic in a stupid political rant, I have this blog. Everyone in the world is free to ignore it, and most of humanity is taking advantage of that right.
My kids explained to me how to delete these posts from my daily feed, and I might start deleting a few people. Of course we will still be close pals and true Facebook friends, but I won't have to scroll through multiple posts on "Romney is an idiot", or "you're stupid because you're not an atheist, only an idiot would believe in God", or "Capitalism is the root of all evil and all inequality because we should all be equal." But then, the reason I post Friedman is just to get the goats of the ranters. Mostly, my friends ignore those posts. I don't post very often, but when I do, I hope it's something clever and entertaining. It's "social" media, right? So I try to be social.
I don't post during dinner on the rare occasions when my wife and I are out on a date. I watch other people take photos of their dinner with their phones, and I know what they're doing. I have friends who do that regularly. While not as obnoxious as the political causes, it seems rude to ignore you spouse to do a Facebook post no matter how witty and clever you think you're being. Or maybe I'm too old-fashioned. If the food is really that special, or if I want to boast about the swell joint I took my wife to, then I will talk about it the next day.
But mostly, I'm not going to get drawn into a political argument. If the other person is as obsessive as I am, it could go on for days and waste countless hours. There are other, better ways to waste my time . . . like I said previously - by ranting on my blog.
I've been reading a huge book of George Orwell's essays. Besides being a great writer and thinker, he was a pretty good political analyst. He wasn't always right in his predictions, and as of 1943, where I am in the book, he's still a committed socialist, which colored both his political and literary analysis. Many of his essays are essential reading, but I just finished one called, "No, Not One", so that's the one I'm currently fixated on. It's actually a book review, but he uses the review as an attack on pacifism. He also regularly savages the Left and communists, which makes me wonder how he still could have been such a fan of a utopian worldwide socialism, especially since in another essay, he trashes utopias and utopian schemes.
But, getting back to his attack on pacifism,
The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. As I have said, it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality. But why should they want to make this flight, in any case? Because, rightly hating violence, they do not wish to recognize that it is integral to modern society and that their own fine feelings and noble attitudes are all the fruit of injustice backed up by force. They do not want to learn where their incomes come from. Underneath this lies the hard fact, so difficult for many people to face, that individual salvation is not possible, that the choice before human beings is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world; that is evil; or you can overthrow them by war, which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands. It seems to me that the text for our times is not “Woe to him through whom the evil cometh” but the one from which I took the title of this article, “There is not one that is righteous, no, not one”. We have all touched pitch, we are all perishing by the sword. We do not have the chance, in a time like this, to say “Tomorrow we can all start being good”. That is moonshine. We only have the chance of choosing the lesser evil and of working for the establishment of a new kind of society in which common decency will again be possible. There is no such thing as neutrality in this war.
How does this relate to today's clash of civilizations? Where the Nazis left off, Islam stepped in. And yes, I know that we're not supposed to accuse others that we disagree with of being Nazis, but if the Jew-hatred, and quest for world domination, and belief that you are the master race deserving and destined to rule over all others, and demands that the rest of the world bow to your constant demands of "sensitivity" as you rationalize the subjugation of your own women and all those who don't believe as you do shoe fits, then wear it.
But were not supposed to look at Islam that way. We're supposed to reach out to the Taliban, Al-Queda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and all of the other terrorist organizations and their offshoots so that they will want to live in peace with us. We're not supposed to point out that that tactic hasn't worked since the beginning of Islam, nor has it ever worked against any other totalitarian ideology. Tyrants and other power mongers welcome pacifists on the other side of course, as they are useful tools.
Just as Orwell had them pegged in 1943, he still has the pacifists pegged today.
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of idiots such as those who made him their president.” — This quote was translated into English from an article appearing in the Czech Republic as published in the Prager Zeitung of 28 April 2011.
So when does the United States get its balls back? And I ask that after being a good little citizen and not making a fuss when I wasn't allowed to accompany my 17 year old daughter into the airport. She'll be out of the country for a month, and I wanted to see her off. She's too old to be a minor, so I was out of luck. As I was walking out of the airport, I had the same thoughts that I'm sure millions of others have had - why? Why are we pandering to Islam like we weren't the most powerful nation the world has ever seen? Why are we expected to feel so guilty at being the recipients of generations of people who have, over the past two centuries created a society that has become the envy of the world so much so, that rather than try to emulate it and create wealth and plenty for all, these barbarian thugs work day and night to destroy it? And there are Americans who agree that we must tear it all down so that we can live as miserably as the poorest wretch in the in the most corrupt dictatorship we can imagine. What the hell happened to us?
Even those who don't want it torn down, still bow to the insanity of political correctness. What do we know about Islam and terrorism that we aren't allowed to say in public? And why aren't we allowed to say it? Oh yeah. We might humiliate the followers for the Religion of They're Not All Terrorists. So what?
Instead of admitting the well-documented, historically accurate, hysterically ignored connection, our government spends millions of dollars to create an airport security system specifically designed to humiliate the traveler. And they do it while apologizing to Muslims when one gets caught trying to game that system, by making it even more uncomfortable for the rest of us. Metal detectors? Sure. Take off your shoes? Of course. Only tiny amounts of liquids? You bet. Full body grope? Well . . . uh . . . I mean - Oh OK, it's for my own safety. I don't know much about Islamic humor (whether or not it's even allowed), but the imams and other Islamic authorities must laugh at us whenever they see an news article or an Internet photo of a young child groped, or a woman in a wheel chair being forced to remove her adult undergarment. Because, as we are repeatedly admonished, it's wrong to profile.
No it isn't. We force ourselves into this idiotic, suicidal situation for the express purpose of not humiliating the followers of Mohammed - who want us to abandon our freedoms and live under "enlightened" Sharia law. We could adopt the methods used by the Israelis at their airports. But that too would humiliate Muslims, wouldn't it? We wouldn't want that to happen. That would be Islamophobic.
But that's not the only problem. How many of us are buying appliances and cars dictated and designed by the environmental movement? Our children are being scared into believing that if they don't reduce their and our standard of living, the Earth will soon become uninhabitable and all the cute, cuddly animals (like polar bears) in the world will curl up and die. Politics of fear anyone?
And what happens when it does get hot outside? Take a day like today for instance? We get warnings. We have an ozone action day. We are advised how to dress and how to act while we're outside. Conversely, when the temperature dips low in the winter, we have cold advisories.
When I was growing up, there were these beings known as mothers who made sure that we were dressed properly for the weather before they threw us out of the house to play. When it was hot, we wore shorts. We played in the pool. When there was no pool, we played in the sprinkler. When we got hot and the sweat was poring down our faces from playing baseball, or football, or riding our bikes, or just chasing each other up and down the street, we drank out of the hose or we went in for a drink. Then we were kicked back outside. In the winter, wearing jackets, gloves, long johns, and boots, even though it was cold to the touch, we played with the snow. Can you believe it? We made snow men. We made snowballs and threw them at each other. And we did many other dangerous things out in the heat and the cold. Somehow, between our mothers and us, we figured out that if we're sweating, it's hot, and if our nose hairs are stiffening up when we breath, it's cold.
I'm going to end this post on a positive note. Somebody sent me the following video as an email. There are some Americans who still have balls, but we need to work together in order to reinvigorate our nation. We need to walk proudly with the understanding that not everyone is going to like us, especially if they are citizens of the 57 states - holy Obama, Batman - I mean of the 57 countries of the OIC. The only thing they deserve from us is a one finger salute. Hold all foreign aid, stop infiltration - I mean immigration - no I was right with infiltration, from any and all of these nations.
It's time to dump the Democrats. They are killing us slowly, but they will be the death of our nation.
A friend of mine emailed me the following video: "Colonel Allen West Answers a Marine's Question". By today's standards, at 3 minutes, 42 seconds, it's a pretty lengthy video. At my age though, I can keep my attention focused for extended periods of time. On really good videos, I've been known to watch uninterrupted for five or six minutes. But like I was saying, watch the video. I had never heard of West before, but now, I would give him my vote for president.
Here. Look.
Notice, if you will, that the man is (dare I say it?) honest. He pulls no punches in order to pander to the Islamic, or the progressive, or the delusions of peace vote. He understands the problem with Islam and isn't afraid to state it in public, on camera, without the cover of weasel words or quibbling politically correct speech. Honesty. From a congressman. It shouldn't be that surprising or unexpected. It's a shame that it is.
But wait! There's more. Read his Wikipedia page.
While serving in Taji, Iraq, on August 20, 2003, West was in charge of the interrogation of Yahya Jhodri Hamoodi, a civilian Iraqi police officer suspected of having information about attacks on American troops in the area.[citation needed] Interrogators had been informed the detainee knew about a planned ambush. When the detainee refused to talk, LTC West was asked to assist. Hamoodi continued to withhold information, and West was accused of firing his pistol past the prisoner's head, frightening him into talking. According to West's sworn statement,[5] the detainee told West:
[The attack] was to occur Friday morning in Saba al Boor vicinity of the police station by positioned snipers supposedly being brought in from Fallujah. [The detainee] was to ID my vehicle and myself for these rooftop firers. We took this information and the following day established flask CPs and used AH-64s overhead. There was no attack and no further attacks have emanated from the town since the apprehension of [the detainee] and his named associates.
At least one suspect was arrested as a result of the information obtained through the detainee's information. The suspect's home was searched, but no plans for attacks or weapons were found. West testified he did not know if "any corroboration" of a plot was ever found. He added: "At the time I had to base my decision on the intelligence I received. It's possible that I was wrong about Mr. Hamoodi."[8]
West, who had completed almost 22 years of active service, was charged with violating articles 128 (assault) and 134 (general article) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He was processed through an Article 32 hearing in November 2003, where he stated "I know the method I used was not right, but I wanted to take care of my soldiers" and was fined $5,000. LTC West accepted the judgment and retired with full benefits in the summer of 2004. Asked if he would have act differently if under similar circumstances again, West testified, "If it's about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can."[9]
So along with honesty, we can add loyalty, bravery, fortitude, and fearlessness.
Of course, not everybody likes West. While I was watching this video again, I noticed a video with Keith Olberman and another with Ed Schultz, both denouncing West. These are denunciations that are easily expected. Schlutz has a history of respecting Al Sharpton, whom he has interviewed on a few occasions. And Olberman? I've read and listened to things that this hateful, hypocritical, pompous twit has said about his political opponents. He is everything that Leftists claim the Rush Limbaugh is. Both of these wise guys adore Obama, who embodies none of the qualities exhibited by West.
When it comes to honesty, we have documented examples of Obama lying about the deficit, the costs of Obamacare, his support for Israel, and other policy decisions he's made. I don't know if West has lied to get to where he is. If so, Olberman, and Schlutz, and Moveon.org, and the rest of the "Progressive" noise machine will ferret out any dishonesty. So far, from the few videos I've seen, the only thing they have is character assassination.
Rep. West was loyal enough to his troops to put his career in danger in a situation where he had to think fast to possibly save American lives. In hindsight, he may have been a bit heavy handed, but he didn't have the luxury of hindsight nor did he have weeks, months, and years to reexamine the situation from every possible angle in order to come up with the perfect solution that would please everyone and harm nobody.
Judging by the way Obama threw friends and family "under the bus" when they became hindrances, one would think that he and his supporters see loyalty as a character flaw. Under loyalty, I would include loyalty to one's country, you know that old fashion concept, the former virtue known as patriotism. West put on a uniform and trained to fight for his country against his countries enemies, both foreign and domestic. Obama can't even summon the fortitude to name our country's enemies, even when those enemies proudly declare themselves.
This is not to say that Obama or those on the Left are the only politicians I don't trust. I don't trust politicians in general, and chances are that if he were elected president, he would do something either during the campaign or during his administration to set me off. The difference with West is, that he's starting from a position of strength when it comes to his basic moral character and stance. It appears that he's putting his own personal power and status behind his need to do what's best for the country. And that's something admirable in anybody.
Yesterday, the Detroit Free Press ran this editorial decrying the latest Supreme Court decision, which essentially struck down McCain Feingold as unconstitutional. It is fearfully titled, "Government by the people, RIP."
Thursday's 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission gives corporations, labor unions and other wealthy agglomerations of narrow economic interest the green light to expand their already disproportionate influence over governmental policy in health care, nutrition, financial regulation and every other realm in which corporations stand to make a buck at the expense of the public interest.
Up until this Supreme Court decision, none of us had to worry about special interests influencing government policy. It just didn't happen. We were protected. But don't worry, the Free Press is calling on the government to save us, in spite of the Supreme Court, to save us.
But Congress must not abandon the fight to regulate corporate spending in candidate elections, and Michigan's congressional delegation and state legislators must push for tougher disclosure rules to assure that voters can at least observe the corrupting impact of corporate campaign cash in real time.
Yes, that's right folks, only Congress can protect us from corporate predators. And they will take care of our medical, energy, and financial needs . . . even though the only working experience most of these people have is in politics and government. They will get advice from smart people . . . who aren't considered special interests?
Today though, in this article, it seems there is a slightly different point of view to the effect of special interests in government.
Dozens of current and former corporate executives have a message for Congress: Quit hitting us up for campaign cash.
Roughly 40 executives from companies including Playboy Enterprises, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, the Seagram’s liquor company, toymaker Hasbro, Delta Airlines and Men’s Wearhouse sent a letter to congressional leaders today urging them to approve public financing for House and Senate campaigns. They say they are tired of getting fund-raising calls from lawmakers — and fear it will get only worse after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling.
and
Congressional candidates who find themselves attacked by a flood of special-interest TV ads in the 2010 elections will likely reach out to their party’s biggest donors for money to help them counter the blitz.
“Members of Congress already spend too much time raising money from large contributors,” the business executives’ letter says. “And often, many of us individually are on the receiving end of solicitation phone calls from members of Congress. With additional money flowing into the system due to the court’s decision, the fundraising pressure on members of Congress will only increase.”
So remind me, whose fault is again that deep-pocketed special interests are running roughshod over us regular Americans? Do members of Congress have some sort of disability that limits their ability to take responsibility for their actions and outrageous mistakes? Maybe Congress needs to pass laws protecting corporations from unscrupulous politicians.
Hasn't it been the Republicans, over the 8 years of the Bush administration who were accused of using the "politics of fear" to maintain control over the American people? We were warned about scary terrorist guys who were out to murder us and our children. How silly.
It's certainly a good thing that nice Obama fellow came along to save us from the politics of fear. He's out warning us about real dangers to our lives, like the absence of socialized medicine in the United States.
President Barack Obama asked skeptical doctors Monday to get behind an overhaul of the nation's health care system, declaring it a "ticking time bomb" for the budget that could force America to "go the way of GM."
The difficulty of his task was evident when he said he's against capping awards in malpractice lawsuits, a top priority for doctors, and earned a smattering of boos — a remarkable public response to a popular president accustomed to cheering audiences.
Gasp! What? Obama booed? Horrors! Those greedy doctors, those profiteers, those kulaks just don't know what's good for them. Of course, our Dear Leader, Hussein Obama struck back forcefully,
Flying to his hometown to speak at the annual meeting here of the American Medical Association, Obama struck back forcefully at those speaking out against his efforts to reshape the health care delivery system to bring skyrocketing health care costs under control and expand coverage to the millions of uninsured.
He had his sharpest rhetoric yet for critics, calling them "naysayers," "fear-mongers" and peddlers of "Trojan horse" falsehoods who should be ignored. He warned interest groups and lobbyists not to use "fear tactics to paint any effort to achieve reform as an attempt to socialize medicine."
"There are those who will try and scuttle this opportunity no matter what," Obama said.
If you read the rest of the article, you notice (or at least I noticed) two things. First, all of the advocacy groups have jumped in to demand that their constituents be taken care of under Obama's plan. We regular folks don't have advocacy groups, well, at least we don't have groups that can purchase the ear of the president, or members of Congress.
Second, Obama, as always, makes promises to all of the pressure groups except for the doctors, who shouldn't expect caps on medical malpractice suits. But so what. Doctors are all wealthy, right? And we certainly don't want to hear about all of the sacrifices these greedy doctors made to get their medical education. All we need to know is that they make a lot of money and that makes them greedy. Obama is going to reign in spending, but he's also going to make sure that everyone gets the medical care they need. So, while a vast new bureaucracy will be created, we, the consumer, will save money on our free medical care. And the only alternative to Obama's plan is the complete and total destruction of our country.
How do we know this? Because Obama says so. And if this isn't the politics of fear I don't know what is. To scare you even more, let me just say, "global warming", or is it "climate change"? Which ever one it is, I hope you didn't read this scary post before bedtime.
In the interest of intelligent commentary, go read some of that scare-monger, Thomas Sowell's thoughts on socialized medicine, which I suppose we can now refer to as Obamacare.
I wanted to buy a copy of Michael Rameriz' new book of cartoons, Everyone Has the Right to My Opinion. That's all I was there for. I was at a book store I've been frequenting for years, one of the last remaining independent book stores in the Detroit area. The owners are very liberal, but I've always liked them. Everyone likes them. And they have a really good book store.
I was talking to one of the owners and the conversation turned, as all conversations seem to turn to in these final days before the election, to the election. And as has been happening more frequently, I surprised her with my current political views. As we were debating the relative merits of each presidential candidate, I noticed another shopper listening in. Actually, everyone was listening. It's not a very big store, and there weren't many people in the store. Then the other shopper joined in. We have a small community of Russian/Jewish immigrants in the area and she was one of them. She filled us both in on how Socialism, no matter if it's being proposed by Obama, or Putin (who we all agreed was a murderous dictatorial thug) or any other progressive politician, leads away from freedom. While we in the United States have been debating Capitalism vs. Socialism for years, she got to live in a socialist worker's paradise. That's why she and her family came here.
When the owner suggested that we look at the allegedly benign socialism of Sweden, the Russian lady brought the discussion closer to home: Canada. They have socialized medicine, which is why so many Canadians are sneaking into the U.S. for medical care. After all, what's a Canadian to do when you have to wait months for an MRI? Die, or cross the border? Then I brought up another area where Canadian freedom has been sacrificed, The Canadian Human Rights Commission. Neither of my conversation partners had heard of it.
That's no surprise. The American Mainstream Media have been as quiet about it as they've been about Obama's past (non-existent) record of achievement and his past dubious associations.
We covered all of the points of contention: environment, economics, foreign policy, the Press, abortion, VP choices, and the thing that surprised me was the weakness of my bookstore owning friend's arguments. There were no comebacks. And she is an intelligent, well-read person. I'm sure she only reads her side, so there was a lot she was unaware of because it isn't reported . . . by her side.
When I argue with my sister, and she can no longer refute my arguments, she just sinks into the classic progressive defense of "you're a hatemonger" and agrees to disagree. Or, as when I was sending her articles on ACORN and The Community Redevelopment Act being the root causes of the current economic meltdown, and being made worse by the malfeasance of Barny Frank, Chris Dodd, and the Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate, she simply never read them. After all, other people are saying other things. Who really knows?
Obama and his team, of course, attack the messenger, engage in character assassination, or refuse access to the offending opinionated parties. I hadn't realized how weak arguments for Liberal policies are. They have to engage in subterfuge to sneak their policies in under assumed Orwellian names, like the Fairness Doctrine, or create an echo chamber where the only voice they hear is theirs, or put their hands over their ears and kill the messenger. We've seen all of this for years. I've finally started paying attention to in the past few years.
Getting back to the original thread of this post, we still had a polite discussion. There was no hysteria, no screaming; we all listened to each other. Probably, nobodies views were changed. We are still friends, and I will still shop at that bookstore. The owner asked if some of our mutual friends knew of my views. Some do and some don't. Sometimes they don't want to listen. I tried to get into a discussion with one of my friends when he mentioned that the Soviet Union was not that bad. After all, they had the Bolshoi Ballet. When I started mentioning daily bread lines, he quickly changed the subject and began talking to someone else. When I mentioned to another friend a while back that I was reading Victor Davis Hanson on why the West was able to spread its influence around the world, he started raving about the environment and how we've destroyed it.
One day all of my friends will know that I'm not a liberal anymore. It will be on the day that they bring up politics.
"No one can find a safe way out for himself if socety is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result." -- Ludwig von Mises
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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CHALLAH AKBAR
