Talking Points are not bad, I conclude.

Because I have taken a take-no-prisoners approach to political debate on Facebook, it has been suggested that all I post is right-wing talking points, and, as such, these are not worthy of debate.

Which brings me to this question.

What's wrong with talking points?

I mean, politicos like them so much there is a left wing website named after them (the liberal Talking Points Memo, or tpm.com).

They are so useful that when Susan Rice was going around lying about Benghazi, she proudly declared that her talking points had been prepared by the State Department, and she really didn't know anything about them (note to future Dem voters, this is why Susan got this task, because Hillary wouldn't be able to claim the same thing).

We all know they clutter vthe fax machines of liberals and conservatives alike.

Heck, I'll admit it, I get about 10 email "newsletters" from various conservative organizations and writers, and more than a handful from military-friendly organizations, plus, I check Drudge multiple times a day for news.  It's basically his "talking points."

So, what's wrong with talking points?  They're basically the PowerPoint view of the world, and all those newsletters I get include links to much more background information about the subject than you are getting in your standard, MSM-fed 90 second news report.

So, I say talking points! Bring them on!

Besides, if all I am is a TP spewer, wouldn't debating such an ill-prepared and stupid man be easy? 

Because I knew you'd ask, here are some good places for your daily talking points:

- Jim Gerety's daily newsletter from National Review Online - always topical, always funny, always filled with links to fun stuff.

- Jonah Goldberg's weekly G-File.  Ok, it's not daily, but it is always funny. And in a world of humorless lefties who can't laughter at themselves (and think I'm always serious, too), it's a necessity.

- Defense News' Early Bird - a necessity for those who work in, or care about, national defense.  Military Times does one, too (may be same content).

- The Daily Caller has a daily blast which is sometimes useful, and also pithy.  

I also get some private mailings (these are defense related) that are very specific, but if you're on the right, you might sign up for Erik Erickson's daily RedState briefing.  I find I disagree with the Tea party faction on tactics, but we're together in philosophy, so, good to know what your brethren are thinking.

From the MSM, there's nothing I want to know, although I get a NYTimes daily email.  It's boring, though, as it's not all politics.

Oh, and I have google alerts for things work related. That's something you should consider.

Ok.  The end.

Climate Change Fascists!!

I am so sick of the "climate change" religionists.  Their latest tactic is rolling out the decaying carcass of Bill Nye (the "Science Guy"), as though having a cartoonish buffoon who's legacy is explaining science to toddlers, is going to win the day for them.

He's soundly mocked. See links, here: http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/02/16/nye-goofs-holds-up-pic-of-arctic-while-talking-about-antarctic-watch-bill-nye-debate-gop-rep-marsha-blackburn-nye-hold-up-pic-of-arctic-and-then-asks-if-antarctic-has-less-ice-climate-depot-answ/

I have posted all over this blog, and there are links galore to articles debunking both the correlations and the strength of the correlations between man and "climate change."

A lot bothers me about those who hold this religious (and I mean that in the most derogatory sense possible) view that Man is responsible for all climate activity on this planet, but, in no particular order here are some:

1. Their claim that the science is "settled."  That, my friends, depends on what you mean by the "science."  If you mean is CO2 increasing, and is Man a contributor to that, then yes, that is settled.  If you mean, is CO2 a greenhouse gas, then, yes, the science is settled.  But, that's science on the order of "water is chemically H2O" level stuff.  This argument from the CC Religionists attempts to paint you as a bumpkin who believes the Earth is 5000 years old and Man roamed it with the dinosaurs.  In other words, they want you to think you're stupid, (and they're smart and enlightened).  

For most CC'ers, their knowledge of the "science" ends here.  That's because that's all they hear from AlGore or MSNBC or the MSM, and it's about all they can comprehend.  They don't understand that the Church of Climate Change typically ignores important things that also impact the science, like other greenhouse gases (um, water vapor, for example), natural events (volcanic eruptions, for example), natural climate variability, or that big ball of heat in the sky we call the Sun.

They don't understand (or willingly ignore) that the Church of Climate Change is built on models developed by "scientists" who often have a vested financial interest in the Church's future.

2. The "consensus" of scientists means you "deniers" need to shut up.  Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, Joe Bastardi and the thousands of others who don't ascribe to the man-caused fear mongering theories of the religionists don't count, as they're not in the consensus.  Well, the consensus is not as great as they want you to believe, and I would encourage you to root around the Internet, and you find a lot of people who find the science problematic, and not so settled at all.  If you have an engineering, science, or math background, some of the crap the religionists are passing off as science should seriously concern you.

3.  Even if you cite experts in the field who produce research that contradicts the party line, and even if it's peer reviewed and well documented and truthful, well, they'll attempt to smear it was "funded by big oil."  This is where Bill Nye devolved to on MTP today.  

4. Extreme weather events are caused by "climate change" and are proof of "climate change."  This is the absolute most maddening claim.  No responsible climate scientist, and not even the most rabid in the "consensus" category will even touch an attempt to tie a specific weather event to "climate change."  The fact is these links can not be proven, not least of all because there is no link.  All you'll really get from them is that extreme weather is a possible result of climate change.  

This is clearly an attempt to influence public opinion,  but when everything is caused by climate change, nothing is.  The new religion's name, "climate change," is even used to be as expansive as possible.  Is there someone alive who thinks the climate hasn't always changed?  The Earth has survived through numerous periods of warming and cooling.  The climate has ALWAYS changed.  This is the very nature of things.  Don't fall for this tactic.  This is entirely meant to distract from the incontrovertible fact that global temperatures have remained the same/fallen slightly since 1998, and their models can not explain "The Pause."  This occurring despite global CO2 emissions continuing to increase.  

Us skeptics say this is because something else is going in here.  These people built their careers (I don't blame anyone for wanting a steady job, but in academia, it's important to be right) on this religion.  Their models were designed to make the most of Man's activities.  Why? Because if you can't say the sky is falling, why should any policy maker fork over the nation's treasury to you to study it more?

That's one group of the believers.  Those are the cash hounds, who need this charade to continue to keep the money flowing.  The harder group are those who know this is a charade, but see it as an opportunity to bring down Western Civilization,  something they've been trying to do for generations.  These were the communist fellow-travelers and the same people who 40 years ago were whining about a new ice and the population explosion.  

Regardless of the cause of the man-caused catastrophe, their proscriptions are all the same - it's the West's fault, stop development, and you people in the 3rd world who'd like to be rich - get back to your caves.

Opposing these people is both a Pro-Science and Moral obligation for me.  That's why I am so passionate about it and find this group to be so dangerous to not just what the West has accomplished but to mankind and what our friends in Brazil and India, and other developing nations may accomplish.  

Obamacare to kill small biz next

Just returned from my eye doctor and he's one of these small businesses who extended their plans discussed in this NBC report (
Workers at auto dealership come face to face with Obamacare trade-offs).

They won't be impacted until 2014, like many of us in the employer provided market.

As many of us on the Right told you,  Obamacare would result in increased costs for most, and worse coverage for nearly everyone already covered.

That is exactly what is happening to those in the individual market and those in the small group market.  Yes, there will be "winners" amongst the previously uninsured and underinsured, at the low end of the spectrum, due to subsidies.  The problem is that people who had health insurance, the vast majority of whom liked their plans and doctors, are being displaced.

We told you so.

American Hustle

We don't do many movies in the theaters any more, so, our Christmas Day was spent at Golden Corral (yech) and a movie.

American Hustle is already being pushed for Oscars, and has garnered something like a 94% favorable score on Rotten Tomatoes.

It's got a 2013 all-star cast with Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams (mostly her B cups), Bradley Cooper, and a short appearance (taking a break from his bad movies) from Robert DeNiro.

If you're old enough to remember The Sting, that's what this movie is, updated to the '70's with today's cast.  In fact, since none of these kids have seen that, I'm trying to find it online.  Any help?

American Hustle is a little slow at first, sort of heavy with the love triangles, but satisfying in the end.

If you're going to invest 2 hours in an outing, you'd do well with this one.

Jonah Goldberg on Reality TV

I think Jonah Goldberg sums up the Phil Robertson mess the best: 

"Maybe the best way to avoid such problems in the future is to demand that all reality-show casts be made up of professional actors. That way, reality will never disappoint us."

Read the whole thing: 

http://nationalreview.com/article/366799/real-rednecks-jonah-goldberg 

Gayest Obamacare Video Ever?

There is barely 24 hours left for people to sign up for Obamacare and be covered by January 1.

I hate to share this, but, your tax dollars and this administration is hard at work pushing Obamacare by trolling gay bars and via gay videos.

If you have young kids around, or you're at work, hide the screen and turn the volume down, but, this is how the O Admin thinks they're hoping to get gays to "get covered."

http://bit.ly/1fyryDg

Piers Morgan Will Decide What's Right & Wrong

This is Piers Morgan's entry into the Phil Robertson kerfuffle.

I like it, because it gets so much wrong about our Constitution, describes Liberalism to a tee, and even brings some clarity to those who may wonder why 2nd Amendment defenders are so serious about that one.

What Morgan and Liberals in general fail to understand is that the First Amendment exists specifically to protect vile speech, and the "bigots" (with "bigot" being a term wholly defined by the user) who utter it. Yes, the Founders were primarily concerned with political speech, but, this protection extended to anyone, saying essentially anything.

You can see the problem for the mythical Everyman here - if we don't have such protections, then WHO will be the arbiter of speech?  WHO will define what's vile?  WHO will point to the bigots?

Leftists are none to happy to stand up and say, gleefully, "We will!!!!!"

And that's the problem, and that's why we have a First Amendment, and that's also why the Founders gave us the Second Amendment.  Because they had lived through a world where their weapons were threatened, and they lived at a time when the only thing standing between them and an oppressive government were their rifles.  So, the Second Amendment should, and does, protect assault rifle devotees.  The Left has had far more success in limiting that Amendment, but those who defend it are doing God's work just as much as those who defend the First.

To my left-leaning friends - if you don't like the Constitution, the Founders gave us a process to change it.  Instead of judge shopping, or electing presidents willing to ignore it, try to change it.  If your ideas are so damn great, can't you convince people on the merits?

BTW - this is my first post using ifttt.com to simultaneously post to Facebook an Twitter.  Let's see how it works...

I Stand With Phil

Do I?

Unless you live unepder a rock, you already know Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson was "suspended" today by his employer, A&E for statements he made in a GQ interview echoing traditional Christian beliefs about homosexuals (and plenty of other sinners, but the prostitute, beastiality, slanderer, and swindler lobbies are thus far silent).

This is a free country and Phil was only expressing his views, which are based in his religion (and mine, by the way).  A&E can do whatever they want, they owe him no platform, and he wasn't using the show directly as that platform.

But, let's face it, to express traditional Christian views these days about homosexuality in particular puts you in the cross-hairs of the biggest grievance lobby extant.  Emboldened by their success in turning traditional marriage into something new, this lobby has decided that anyone who finds their behavior abhorrent and anti-God must be squelched.  You shall not know that a major religion considers homosexuality a sin, punishable by death!

OOOOOOOPS!  Wrong religion there!  That's Islam which considers homosexuality a sin, punishable by death.  Christianity considers it a sin, but offers the sinner a path to redemption via God's amazing Grace.  That's Mr. Robertson's religion.  

Were he a Muslim, would A&E had been so quick to suspend him?

I'm guessing not.

JFK, blah, blah, blah

Last week marked the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination.

Yes, it was a big deal that an American president was murdered.

But, 50 years out, do we still have to persist in the mythology that surrounds this event?

The Left (who might have a hard time accepting JFK as a Democrat these days) has even tried to re-write history to claim that the right wing element in Dallas was responsible for JFK's death (although an avowed Communist killed him), but, of more annoyance to me are the people who try to say ridiculous stuff like:

• "America lost its 'innocence' that day."   We were only 18 years removed from the end of WW2, and 10 from Korea.  Had the brushes with Hitler and the action in Korea not erased our innocence by 1963?
• "It changed the course of events."  Exactly how?  I wish the people who say this (who usually want to act like JFK's death led directly to the Civil Rights movement) would explain.  Seems the three biggest things to happen in the 60's were the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the Moon Landing.  I'd posit that ALL of these had their die cast before November 1963, and LBJ was being forced by politics (not JFK's death) to carry through on all of them.
• "He was such a great president."  His legacy is helped by his death, since he never had to actually fight for anything, or serve as a lame duck.  In all honesty, his term was just too short.  You really need to judge him and LBJ together, and when we go there, I thing we find it's a little more average.

That's all.

Debating Abortion

One of my co-workers (a Mormon, no less) just discovered the existence of Peter Singer.

You may remember Mr Singer.  He's the Princeton "Bioethicist" who argues that abortion should be legal due to sentience and thus, infanticide should also be legal.  You have to appreciate the chutzpah of people like Singer. At least they're honest that they think certain people have no right to live, and they're perfectly happy to choose which of us fall into that category. 

I'll return to that later.

This article is about how you argue with those who want to ensure that abortion remains "safe, legal, and rare." And by that, they mean, "available at any time, for any reason."

Get them to agree with a central premise, that life begins at conception.  Leftists like to think of themselves as "science" followers, so throw a little science at them.  Ask them, in the last 40 years, in which direction has science been moving with respect to "life." I've got news for them, it's all towards conception, not the other way.  Eventually, these crazy scientists are going to be able to completely shepherd a baby from conception to "birth" outside the womb.  What are you going to argue as the beginning of that process then?  Get them to agree to that and all you're arguing about is timing. You'll ultimately win that argument.

Most abortionists, even if they agree with the conception arguments are going to dismiss it as immaterial to the debate.  We call these people Godless, but, for fun, how do you debate those who have already crossed this Rubicon? 

Leftists like to think they're superior to us because they're for Affirmative Action and standing up for minorities.  So, appeal to their better instincts.  Remind them that the initial proponents of abortion were eugenicists like Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who saw abortion as a way to cleanse society of the less desirable among us.  People Sanger felt were inferior, like Blacks and other ethnic minorities.  It's people like Sanger who eventually morphed into Nazi's.  Ask your Leftist protagonist how it feels to run in that company?

Are they still standing?

Liberals hate evil corporations, right? Their entire lives are devoted to protecting the little guy from the ravages of capitalism. Give them a little education in the abortion industry.  This is a multi-billion dollar industry, protected by lobbyists and industry groups just like any other big business.  Furthermore, this industry is pushing to retain a system that promotes a completely unnatural act, all to line the pockets of big corporations and evil rich doctors who participate in this industry.  Do these people really care about that patient or do they only care about the paycheck? Ask your. Liberal friend.  Should our tax dollars be subsidizing this industry? Isn't this just more Corporate Welfare dressed up as something else?

The next time you see some Planned Parenthood talking head wailing about protecting a woman's "right" to choose, remember that this person is a lobbyist for a big business who stands to lose millions of dollars each year if this industry fades away.

My favorite argument with these nitwits is the "control" of a woman's body issue.  The caricature of the conservative is of some madman standing in your bedroom telling you what you can and can't do in there.  That's exactly what it is, a caricature.  They like to paint us as interested in preventing women from making this life changing choice because of male patriarchy or some crazy religious devotion.  Guilty on the latter.  Own it.

Remind these people that their side is all about control of your body.  They want to tell you how much soda you can drink, how many trans fats you can eat, how much nicotine you can smoke, what additives go into your food, what radiation makes your food tastier and safer, what preservatives make your food last longer, what temperature your steak can be cooked to at your favorite steakhouse (for those who would allow you to consume red meat at all), and which drugs you are allowed to get high on.  They've taken control of the health care system now, I can't wait to see what else they're going to say we can and can't do to ourselves. The ONLY thing they don't want to regulate and control is a woman's womb.  Pretty much every other body part is in play for them.  But, DONT TOUCH MY VAGINA!

Let's face it, you're largely debating idiots here.  Few of them will have the cojones to take the Singer position and admit that they believe certain people (as Randy Newman reminds us in "Short People") "got no reason to live." 

At least with those, you can simply say they have a different moral compass, and while they'll rot in Hell for it, you can respect them on Earth.

Climate Change God

I am weary of Leftists who blame every single weather event on "climate change." 

While some in the climate change industry clearly have something ($) to gain from attempts to link severe weather to long term climate trends, the typical Lefty instead has a cultish devotion to the Church of Climate Change.

In that regard, are they really any different from the Religious, who find the Hand of God in every natural disaster? They're each looking for some order in the sea of randomness that is weather, and both have about the same chance of being able to prove their religion is correct while they live.

At least the Religious person will be rewarded with an answer to their question upon their death, while the Lefty Cult member will have to trudge through his life dealing with being wrong with no reward at then end.

Keith Law: hypocrite lefty

If you're a hard core baseball stat head, you know Keith Law.  He's a former front office guy for Toronto, who now writes and does analysis on prospects (mostly) for ESPN.  He's entertaining, hosts a weekly podcast, and contributes to ESPN's baseball coverage.  I recommend his stuff to you, but you'll largely need an Insider account to access it.

Law's also a lefty, which he revealed to me in his tweets during the 2012 election cycle.  For a brilliant guy, he made one tweet making fun of Romney using the MSNBC intelligence level comment about "women full of binders" to disparage Romney.  

I unfollowed him at that time, because, quite honestly, I don't follow Keith Law to hear his political opinions.  A guy who has 400,000 followers on twitter, largely due to his baseball background, should probably stay away from politics, lest it instantly go to 200,000.

But, I like Keith's baseball analysis and when the formerly great "Baseball Today" podcast went away, I switched to his weekly, "Behind the Dish" podcast, which I still commend to you.

On a recent podcast, Law said he wanted to stay away from politics but wanted to get this one thing out there that he found offensive.  

He related that after St. Louis beat LA in the NLCS, some people (Cardinal fans?) were enjoying the fact that St Louis won because they play "the right way," and hey tweeted that and, apparently disparaging things about Dodger players and Los Angeles.

Now, I might point out to any idiot who attributed LA's loss to not playing "the right way" that you don't make it to the final 4 in any sport if you're playing the "wrong" way and that person should re-evaluate what they understand "right" and "wrong" to be and to shut up until they understand.

But, instead of telling these idiots to buzz off, Law decided to ascribe motives to them which he couldn't possibly know, but which we typically see in liberals when they want to engage in some simple stereotyping of the right and reinforce their own inflated self-worth. Law decided they meant "The White Way" and let's face it, since they're from that Red enclave in Missouri which opposes gay marriage (unlike his former domicile of Massachusetts) they must be.......(you guessed it) RACISTS, who are just angry at the influx of Latin players into the American pastime. 

Leftist Law thus neatly claims to be apolitical, gets in some trashing of an entire part of the country, while engaging in the same simple generalizations that he tells us he finds so distasteful. 

 

WaPo: How OCare Website Failed

Having been involved in large IT projects, this is a classic case of doing pretty much everything wrong. 

In addition to a horrid policy and a premise that is doomed, it is being led by people incapable of managing it.

Let's see, they can't lead this or the country,  sounds about right.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/challenges-have-dogged-obamas-health-plan-since-2010/2013/11/02/453fba42-426b-11e3-a624-41d661b0bb78_story_3.

Obamacare horror stories (via Matt Walsh's blog)

I encourage you all to read Matt Walsh's excerpts from people when he
asked how is Obamacare hurting them personally.

Link at bottom, but first, my rant:

I realize the Left loves to deal in these personal tragedy, anecdotal
vignettes to sell their latest attempt at expanding the modern welfare
state, but, read these (and this is a
loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong post) and talk to your
self-employed friends, or your friends who work for small businesses,
and discover for yourself what is happening beyond the faux government
shutdown and the disastrous, incompetence-laden Obamacare rollout.

It'd be nice if reporters who cover, perhaps, the insurance industry,
would explain how it's the lower and middle, middle-class who are
going to get hosed the most from this piece of crap legislation.

Those of us who work for Fortune 500 companies, I expect we'll get to
keep the health insurance we like (though I lost the insurance I
"liked" last season, so we'll see what Obama has in store for me Nov 1
when we have open enrollment for 2014).

Since the Obama administration is nothing if not Fascist (in the
traditional sense of the word, not the modern, incorrect pejorative
sense), so if you work in Corporate America, consider yourself amongst
the privileged few.

Those who choose security over freedom shall have neither.

Read these:
http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/10/21/the-definitive-guide-to-how-obamacare-is-destroying-american-lives/

Practical (and MSM proof) defunding strategie

Andrew C. McCarthy tweets today an article from Mike Cannon: Terrific @mfcannon piece says stop squabbling & get busy on these practical #DefundObamacare strategies tinyurl.com/lr5n5or

Sent from my iPad

The GOP: A Fricking Disaster

The national GOP is a disaster.  

I am a conservative, and I have posted before that today, the home for Conservatism is the GOP.   I do appreciate the energy of the Tea Parth caucus and those who became active in politics because of it. Opposition to debt and Obamacare were the primary drivers for the tea party, so to go to the wall over these two things seemed a logical course of action for them.

I get that.

I also get that in order for there to be real, meaningful action on those two fronts, we will need a vast Senate majority and a Republican president.  It would behoove the Tea Partiers to understand this as well.  It would also be useful if they'd give their strategy some thought.  

The kind of intellectual purity I get from these people reminds me of libertarians! and how many of them are there in any national office. Exactly zero.

I appreciate the principles. I share them.

Know what else I appreciate?  Winning elections.  Because when you win elections, you get to put your principles into practice.  I would like to remind my tea party friends of this.  Get smart, develop a strategy that enables us to chip away at the Left's horrible plans, and that puts us back on a path to electoral victory.  

I wish the country were composed of 51% Tea Party advocates, but it isn't. Fortunately, most of the country shares many of the principles that birthed the Tea Party, but, they also want good government and competence in leadership.  This latest fiasco demonstrated none of that. Fortunately for us, both sides lived down to the occasion.

I don't think the damage to the GOP will be lasting, but I do think the whole exercise was pointless and it cost us a week of actual news stories about the failure of the Obamacare rollout.  And for that, I am extremely disappointed in the way this was handled.

NAPOLITANO: A rising torrent of debt and destruction - Washington Times

Andrew Napolitano opines about the debt limit deal.

SPOILER: It's bad.

NAPOLITANO: A rising torrent of debt and destruction - Washington Times

Shutdown, through MSNBC's eyes

I get about 5 minutes per week of MSNBC told through Tony Kornheiser's radio show, where Tony spouts off something he heard on Morning Joe that fits in his worldview, and David Aldridge and Jeanne McManus parrot what they heard Rachel Maddow say or they read in the Post, the New York Times, or The New Yorker.

Anyway, according to them, the open air memorials and parks around Washington (and the rest of the country) were barricaded because of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin.  Yes, that's right, in the MSNBC world, these two (one not even an elected representative) have somehow gotten the National Park Service to erect barricades and put up orange cones to keep these places closed.  Because the optics of Republicans shutting down memorials and keeping WW2 vets out is so good for the party.

At the same time, they call us stupid.

You can not make this crap up.

Bring out your dead...

CBS is trolling for your "Shutdown Stories" on twitter (see https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/389362517031792642).

Today's is a group who wanted to raft the Colorado, but can't because it's shut down.  The park entrance, not the actual river, which at last report was still flowing despite Barack Obama's promise to roll back the tides and lower the ocean levels.  You recall, he didn't actually promise to stop rivers from flowing, so, that's one campaign promise kept (are you scoring, fact checkers everywhere?).

If anything, these stories should tell us the depth and breadth of the government has become so vast that we can't seem to do anything in our life, especially if it's risky, without the government there to guide us.

Yesterday, Alyssa Milano tweeted the always scary link to a story about food inspections being shut down due to the FDA not having funding,

To the Liberal mind, it makes perfect sense that these two events are a tragedy.  By God, do we all want to die, either in a horrible rafting accident, sans the briefings given by the Park Service, or via poisoned food? Surely only the Feds can save us from these horrible events?

Apparently, all they really need the NPS to do is open the gates to the park, so this group seems to have considered the safety issues and taken them on themselves.  I wonder, can they put in at another spot, and when they cross Federal park land, will the NPS try to stop them?

Anyway, on the FDA front, I know you're all thinking about the horrible things that happen to our food supply and that the only thing between us and a violent botchelism death is a bureaucrat inspecting a chicken plant in Alabama. 

I would suggest that it is in food producers best interest to avoid making their customers sick or dead, and that the safety of our food supply could be reliably assured without an army of 2000 food inspectors.  After all, we did that for about 150 of the country's first years in existence, and, despite what you were taught in middle school, most of our ancestors survived long, fruitful lives without the scourge of bad food over their head.  Not to mention that food would be easier to produce, more plentiful, and, I am sure tastier.  

Obamacare: Here to Stay (a while)

In light of the recent "opening" of Obamacare's exchanges, I have much to say.

Our personal experience with this law is one I think many across the nation will be feeling, and it's emblematic of the lies told personally by this president to get this POS law passed.  Of course, many people are discovering that "You can keep your doctor (or plan), if you like them," was an outright lie, and "The average American will see their premiums reduced by $2500" was an outright lie, and "Birth control will be free" is an outright lie (it's free under certain conditions),  

Now that the law is written and the regulations are in place, and the exchanges (nominally) operating, the opposition's best strategy is to let this thing impact Americans.  While I appreciated Ted Cruz's attempts to force repeal of the law, it should have ended as an education effort with some CR to fund the government in place.  We are not going to repeal this law without a Republican president and Senate, and those who think we can are imbeciles.  During a week when we should have been issuing press releases solely about the horrible nature of the rollout and the negative consequences on Americans, we instead were subjected to the shutdown.  

The Dems have done their own calculus on this one,  it should be obvious to anyone with a pulse that they have decided that while they are being hurt, the GOP is getting hurt worse, and the added benefit is that there is an internecine struggle between Tea Partiers and mainstream Republicans that threatens to impact Senate control in 2014.  I realize that the Tea Party created tremendous momentum in 2010 and returned the House to the GOP! but it also cost the GOP Senate control that year with choices like Sharon Angle, Cnristine O'Donnell, and Linda McMahon.  

With that history in mind, let's accept that until at least the legislative branch is firmly in our control, no effort to repeal Obamacare will succeed.  It took anti-abortion foes 20 years to realize what the Left has always known - that you chip away at institutions, one stone at a time.  That strategy is leading to the gradual elimination of the abortion-on-demand industry and it will also need to be followed with Obamacare.  

Making the chipping easier will be the law itself.  People are going to hate this law.  The rate increases, the bureaucratic bungling, the taxes, will all lead to widespread dissatisfaction.  The people will demand fixes, and when we're fixing it, vice killing it (usually portrayed as killing it with no alternative) the Left will have little choice but to go along.

Which leads me to the awful performance of the exchanges.  I know a thing or two about the rollout of large IT projects.  This one has truly been awful.  No self-repecting company would have gone to market with this garbage.  However, the government has near unlimited financial resources to bear, so if Obamacare opponents think this will be the death knell for the program, they are wrong.  Eventually, the exchanges will work.  Yes,  their performance is emblematice of the scope of this thing and the administration's generall incompetence, and they make great objects of ridicule, but they will eventually work.

What won't work is Obamacare if sufficient numbers of young people do not sign up and pay inflated premiums.  And, recall, anything will seem inflated when you had been paying $0.  This will be the true test, and it's the one I think will fail. 

You can read older posts on my thoughts on what will work, but in general it involves decoupling insurance and employment.

Debt limit

Haven't posted in ages, so I hope you have missed me.

Blogger finally has a decent iPad app, so it's easier now.  

This week we will hit the limit on the nation's credit card.  Conservatives want some concessions from Obama in exchange for giving him more credit.  

Whether you agree on what those concessions should be, let's talk about the big lie that is default.

Liberals want you all to believe that failure to allow the country to take on more debt means we would default on our obligations to our debtors.  It would not necessarily happen that way because the Obama admin would still be receiving tax revenues and would have the power to choose how to spend tho see revenues.  Since we all agree default is not an option, those revenues would go towards paying our debtors.  At the same time, the government would have no other option than to stop incurring new debt.  What this would mean is a partial government shutdown, one severe enough where the tax revenues coming in could fund the debt payments and continuing operations.

There is no dispute amongst anyone that tax revenues can fund the debt payments.  Apparently, the Obama admin wants us to believe they wouldn't pay them.  That must be their plan, because otherwise, they wouldn't be threatening these dire consequences.  

The truth is more likely that the O admin doesn't want people to learn that they are lying, and that the partial shutdown wouldn't be that bad anyway.

That's part of the reason that now, during the current budget impasse, they are intentionally shutting down parks and roads and overlooks - to make you all believe that this is really something awful.

It's not.