I recently ran across two interesting excerpts from Frederic Bastiat. One excerpt was about the socialists and their tactics. The other was about the law and its perversion. Because of their content and relevance, I was shocked to find out they were written more than 160 years ago.
Fascinating!
The Obama Administration says 3.3 million people have "signed up" for ObamaCare as of the end of January. Of course, the Administration "won't say" how many have actually "fully enrolled by paying for their first month's premium." Best guesses seem to be less than a third.
But let's be generous and pretend all have actually paid and are therefore genuine enrollees into the program. How many of those are among the uninsured the ObamaCare law (formally named the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act") was supposed to help? Not many, it appears. The best estimates seem to say just 11% of the actual enrollees were previously uninsured; the rest lost their insurance because of ObamaCare.
That means the entire country has been put through this incredible set of problems — and will be put through so much more in the next couple of years — to aid something like just 1% (that's 1 percent — one one-hundredth) of the people the ObamaCare proponents claimed this new law was for — just something like 360,000 people if we are exceptionally generous!
In other words, the Obama Administration's ObamaCare numbers don't add up. It really sounds like this law is a complete disaster. Maybe that's why even the insurance companies may pull out from ObamaCare.
UPDATE: Actually, it's worse than that. They started out telling us we had to pass and implement ObamaCare because there were 30 million people in this country without insurance. Now the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tells us there will still be 30 million people without insurance after ObamaCare is fully implemented. That sounds like a complete failure to me.
And please remember the fact that giving everyone insurance doesn't necessarily help them get medical care. This bill does nothing to create one additional doctor, nurse, clinic, or hospital. In fact, it's driving many of all these out of the medical profession. That's not a success by any measure.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
— Martin Luther King, 28 August 1963
. . . on this week's State of the Union Address:
If President Obama's proposed executive actions are legal and constitutional, why hasn't he taken them in the last five years? If he could have avoided putting us in the worst condition since Jimmy Carter, why hasn't he?
The President said, “If John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan could negotiate with the Soviet Union, then surely a strong and confident America can negotiate with less powerful adversaries today.” So why is President Obama afraid to negotiate with the Republicans?
God saw he was getting tired,
and a cure was not to be.
so He put His arms around him,
and whispered, "Come with Me".
With tearful eyes we watched
him suffer and saw him fade away,
although we loved him dearly,
we could not make him stay.
A golden heart stopped beating,
hard working hands to rest,
God broke our hearts to prove to us,
He only takes the best.
We love you.
Vaya con Dios, mi amigo!
Here are just a few things I've run across in this new year that are right on point.
The image above is serious. Our remaining World War II veterans are aged, and many are infirm. When you see one, remember the valiant individual who is now hidden in that aged exterior.
The other two things here are just laugh-out-loud funny.
You older folks may have to explain this last one to the youngsters.
“The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with.”
“The left is going to have to get accustomed to the fact that it does not have a monopoly on free speech and is not the only group who is permitted to voice its opinion in the public square. The left may control Hollywood, but they don’t control the hearts and minds of a majority of Americans.”
— Quotations provided in ‘Today is a good day for the freedoms of speech and religious liberty’
I heard Paul Harvey tell this story on the radio at Christmas time a few years ago. I liked it then, and it's only grown on me since. But my attempts to find a copy of the story were unsuccessful — until the middle of 2007, when I found a similar (but different) story. That enabled me to find the one I remembered, at last. It's still worth sharing. Again.
Unable to trace its proper parentage, I have designated this as my Christmas story of "The Man and the Birds." You know the Christmas story, the God born a man in a manger, and all that escapes some moderns — mostly, I think, because they seek complex answers to their questions, and this one's so utterly simple. So for the cynics and the skeptics and the unconvinced, I submit a modern parable:
Now, the man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a Scrooge; he was a kind, descent, mostly good man, generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmastime. It just didn't make sense, and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as a man.
"I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite, that he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed, and they went to the midnight service.
Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier, and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound, then another, and then another, sort of a thump or a thud. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window; but when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm, and in a desperate search for shelter had tried to fly through his large landscape window.
Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it.
Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in, so he hurried back to the house, fetched breadcrumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted, wide-opened doorway of the stable. But to his dismay the birds ignored the breadcrumbs and continued to flop around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them; he tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.
And then he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me, that I'm not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow; they would not be led or shooed, because they feared him.
If only I could be a bird, he thought to himself, and mingle with them and speak their language! Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the safe, warm . . . to the safe warm barn . . . but I would have to be one of them, so they could see and hear and understand. At that moment, the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sound of the wind, and he stood there listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. . . . And he sank to his knees in the snow.
Wishing you all a blessed and peaceful Christmas!
Image thanks to ZIP
Warren Buffet, in an interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:
"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election."Beyond that, here are his thoughts for the Congressional Reform Act of 2013:
Looks to me like this would work. Its only drawback is that the chances of passage by our current Congresscritters are somewhere south of zero. The only way this will happen is if it is forced on them.
Received by e-mail, and posted in a slightly edited version:
If he can do it to Catholics, will the Protestants be next? Catholic priests in military face arrest for celebrating Mass.I saw this during the shutdown. Even though it's now late, it's still worth posting.This is a verified news report. This is to my mind the most outrageous thing the Obama Administration has done yet during the shutdown. It even surpasses what Obama did to our WWII vets, and that was outrageous.
I hope everyone understands what this means. Obama is saying Catholic religious services are "non-essential". So much in fact that Obama is willing to jail priests even if they offer Mass "voluntarily" — for free, as part of their duties as Catholis priests imposed at their ordination. Everyone should also understand that this was done only to the Catholics but not to the Protestants or the Jews or the Muslims or any of the other religious groups.
If you need a Catholic sacrament - nonessential and disallowed. Communion - nonessential and disallowed. Confession - nonessential and disallowed. Baptism - nonessential and disallowed. Confirmation - nonessential and disallowed. Marriage - nonessential and disallowed. Extreme unction (last rights) - nonessential and disallowed. Catholics - nonessential and disallowed.
I wish every Catholic who voted for Obama could see this. This is an outright attack on the Catholic faith, plain and simple.
Even if Obama is forced to take this order back, we must never forget that he actually did it and wanted to do it. This affront to Catholics is beyond the pale. It’s a crystal clear religious freedom violation and as far as I am concerned, this by itself is an impeachable offense. It ought not go unpunished and it better never be forgotten.
Because of the government shutdown (of 17% of the government), the National Park Service has closed all national parks and monuments.
President Thin-Skin (Barack Obama) is now looking just plain mean. The whole concept of a government shutdown — or a partial government shutdown (of 17% of the government, like this one — is saving money. But Obama is spending extra money in attempts to close off open air monuments, like the World War II and Korean War memorials, the Lincoln Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial, and Mount Rushmore. He even has his people trying to block off public highways to prevent people from being able to see these monuments from afar. And now it's reported that he explicitly wants to make life as difficult as possible for the public, apparently because he things the Republicans will be blamed for his actions.
None of these were closed during previous government shutdowns. Nor were the military academies' sports teams threatened with game forfeitures in previous shutdowns, but Obama tried to do that this time until he was blocked by his Defense Secretary who allowed the games to proceed.
It's even worse than that. Now Catholic chaplains have been threatened with arrest if they minister to military personnel now that such ministry is more necessary. At this point it's not clear if that applies to military chaplains as well as contract priests (because there aren't enough active duty Catholic chaplains to serve the Catholics in the military). And, of course, that's despite the fact that the military furloughs shouldn't have happened in the first place.
And that's not the worst of it. Obama has endangered the nation's security by furloughing 70% of our intelligence analysts, while pulling people off furlough to close the open air memorials (like the World War II and Korean War and Lincoln memorials). And he's had people thrown out of their own homes that are on leased federal land.
He's even shut down the military commissaries (a non-appropriatged funds activity unaffected by appropriations & continuing resolutions) while keeping his golf courses open. But at least Camp David is fully staffed, so President Obama can have all his creature comforts.
Looks to me like these images are appropriate.
President Barack Obama says he will be happy to negotiate with the House Republicans, but "not with a gun held to the country's head."
Of course, before the shutdown (of 17% of the government), President Obama said — repeatedly — that he would not negotiate.
So President Obama's statement is clearly false. This makes it look like President Obama will say anything he thinks he can get people to believe, regardless of whether it's true.
And, in other words, what Obama is saying is "Give me everything I want, and then I'll negotiate." But what will there be to negotiate about after the Republicans give Obama everything he wants?
Obamacare, the horribly mis-named Affordable Care Act, is not ready for prime time. Its failures have been showing up in the news for months and months. Even President Barack Obama has admitted it's not ready to function — by his actions though not his words. He has made this admission by unilaterally delaying a whole series of Obamacare provisions, something the language of the law does not allow him to do. Just as examples:
Obamacare is not ready to run. It should be delayed until it's at least close.
Obamacare has already cost us a lot in money and jobs. It has been damaging our economy since the day it was signed. Now it appears Obamacare may actually increase the number of people without health insurance, when the whole rationale for its passage was to give them insurance. And what do we get from Obama's minions?
President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been talking a lot about how the Republicans — especially those in the House of Representatives — wnat to shut down the government because, they say, the Republicans oppose all government. They claim the Republicans are insisting the Senate meet their demands or the government will be shut down. And their compatriots in the mainstream media parrot these claims.
But there's a problem with these claims. Part of it is that it's Barack Obama and Harry Reid who have said they won't negotiate at all, not the Republicans. Their idea of a deal is their opponents accede to their demands. Yes, Harry Reid is demanding that House Republicans take orders from him, or the government will be shut down. The Republicans have offered various different proposals.
So, in reality, who's being intransigent? Who is, in reality, trying to produce a government shutdown?
President Obama and Senator Reid say they want to preserve Obamacare unchanged. Indeed,
Mr. Obama also refuses to bend on any part of ObamaCare — except when he unilaterally announces bending in his own political interest. He decided on his own, and contrary to the plain text of the law, to delay for a year the business mandate to provide insurance for employees. He also unilaterally delayed verifying the income of Americans seeking subsidies. He did this to pile more people into the ObamaCare exchanges, lest they fail, and to limit the harm to job creation before 2014.That's not even counting Obama's unilateral delay in the law's caps on patient out-of-pocket expenses (contrary to the provisions of the law), the waiver from Obamacare's provisions he gave to Congress and its staffers (violating Constitutional equal protection provisions), and all the waivers he and his head of the Health & Human Services Department have given to all his union friends. Perhaps Obama and Reid think unionists and Congressmen (and their staffs) are "more equal than others."Yet now he'd rather see the government shut down than accept the ObamaCare compromises that House Republicans have put in their latest government funding bill. He refuses to delay the law for a year though his own actions reveal it is not ready for prime time. And he won't even accept repeal of the medical-device tax that 79 Senators, including 33 Democrats, are on record as supporting. The tax is already hurting innovation and sending jobs overseas.
Yet these folks keep saying Obamacare will be good for everyone and good for the country. But
if Obamacare is so great, why don’t Congress and President Obama have to enroll in it? If it’s good enough for the rest of the country, Huelskamp said, “it should be good enough for the President of the United States.”Sounds like more regime dishonesty to me. And yet another violation of Constitutional equal protection.
Obama and Reid want to blame the Republicans, but
it takes two to tangle, and Mr. Obama is as much to blame for the partisan pileup as Mr. Cruz. This is a President who is eager to negotiate with dubiously elected Iranian mullahs but can't abide compromise with duly elected leaders of Congress. He refuses to negotiate at all over an increase in the federal debt limit, claiming this has never happened. Like so much that Mr. Obama says, he knows this is false. His own staff suggested the spending sequester during the 2011 debt debate, and Democratic Congresses have used the debt limit to extract concessions from Republican Presidents. [emphasis added]And then there's this, continuing on the theme of things the Obama people are saying that simply aren't true:
Once again tonight I heard Secretary of State John Kerry claiming on 60 Minutes that Iraq under Saddam Hussein didn't have chemical weapons — that the intelligence that he did was wrong — despite the fact that even John Kerry and others in the Obama regime have acknowledged that Saddam Hussein used those (nonexistent) weapons against Iran and against Iraq's own people in 1987-8.
Are Barack Obama, John Kerry, and their regime friends really that stupid — or do they think we are?
UPDATE:
Headline: Harry Reid Forced Obama To Scrap Meeting With GOP Leaders On Averting Government Shutdown…
Story:When the president considered sitting down with the four congressional leaders in the White House ahead of the deadline to avert a government shutdown, Reid privately urged Obama to call off the meeting, according to several people familiar with the situation. Reid believed that it would amount to nothing more than a photo-op that would give the false impression that a serious negotiation was occurring, even warning he wouldn’t attend such a session. Obama scrapped it. [emphasis added]
Result: Barack Obama and Harry Reid confirm again they are not willing to negotiate. They do not want an agreement. They want a shutdown. Their concept is "Let's compromise — do it my way!" They're just two little dictators.
President Barack Obama says the horribly misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (more generally knows as Obamacare) is the law of the land and everyone — especially the law's opponents — should "just accept it."
That made me think of this, which is exactly as logical.
Obama partisan Senat Majority Leader Harry Reid goes further. He apparently believes there has never been a bad law, and no bad law has ever had to be overturned. (Or, at least, that's what he says.) To paraphrase Reid only very slightly,
Are these people really that dumb? Or do they think we are?
It seems to me this kind of "argument" is disingenuous, and is intended by these individuals only to intimidate and deceive.
There's an interesting observation in an item about President Obama and health insurance:
But if Obama is capable of getting people insurance just by giving speeches, why didn't he do that four years ago rather than let Harry Pelosi and Nancy Reid impose their monstrous new law on the country?There's also something about New York state getting funding from the Energy Research and Development Administration (or Authority):
New York governor Andrew Cuomo is launching a $140 million ad campaign to lure businesses to the Empire State. The campaign, “New York State Open for Business,” is being funded with money drawn from federal disaster aid received in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and from the Power Authority and Energy Research and Development Authority, according to the New York Times.The only trouble is, ERDA went out of existence decades ago when the Department of Energy was created.
We also learn that being gay is NOT genetic — because Jason Collins, the NBA basketball player who has come out as gay has an identical twin brother (with identically the same genes), and that identical twin brother is NOT gay.
(installed July 22, 2007)
