Friday, November 8, 2013

For your weekend reading



2013 Marine Corps Birthday Message: "Enduring Fortitude, Unfailing Valor" 
They showed this at the local birthday ball last Saturday. Worth seeing. Includes Col. Barney Barnum (MOH) and Norm Hatch, whose team of combat photographers got the Academy Award for filming on Tarawa. Both were at our table at the 2012 MCHF Awards dinner. http://www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2012/04/marine-corps-heritage-foundation-2012.html ~Bob

United States Marine Corps 238th Birthday

Worth Reading: A Doctor tells us how Obamacare saves money

Good Column: The Bad Apple President. By Daniel Greenfield 
Excerpt: Leave the television on CNN, MSNBC or your local news and between weather and sports, you’ll hear these lies peddled by Obama, his advisors and assorted Democratic Party figures reciting the same talking points about the Wild, Wild West where Bad Apple plans roamed the frontier And every word of it is a lie. The people losing their plans didn’t have substandard plans. They had a wide variety of plans from light to bulletproof. 

Ex-MSNBC Anchor Screwed By Obamacare. By John Nolte
Excerpt: Dylan Ratigan, a left-wing, one-time MSNBC anchor, tweeted out his apparent frustration upon learning that ObamaCare not only cost him the health plan he liked, but his new one will cost $430 a month more. Ratigan closed his tweet with, "Thnx Mr. President!": (Stories like this give me a frisson of schadenfreude. ~Bob)

Does ObamaCare Discourage Marriage?
Excerpt: Just as there are penalties in the tax code for couples who get married, financial penalties in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) also discourage couples from "tying the knot," says Devon M. Herrick, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. ... The exchange subsidies are rather generous to low-income individuals. However, the exchange subsidies are more generous to unmarried couples than to couples who marry. Consider the case of two unmarried college students each earning about $23,000 annually, who move in together. If that same couple married, their combined household income of nearly $46,000 would rise as a percent of the poverty level from 200 percent (individually) to 296 percent for a married family of two. As a result, their premiums in the health insurance exchange would be capped at a higher percentage of their income, providing a smaller total subsidy. (Romney won among married people--of course they want to discourage marriage. ~Bob)

Health co-ops, created to foster competition and lower insurance costs, are in danger
Excerpt: When the new health-care law was being cobbled together, Congress decided to establish a network of nonprofit insurance companies aimed at bringing competition to the marketplace, long dominated by major insurers. But these co-ops, started as a great hope for lowering insurance costs, are already in danger. ... Their failure would leave taxpayers potentially on the hook for nearly $1 billion in defaulted loans and rob the marketplace of the kind of competition they were supposed to create. (Like Green Energy, another progressive rat hole for your tax dollars. ~Bob)

Ten Reasons ObamaCare Will Fail. By Steven Plaut 
Excerpt: There is a fundamental difference between economists and lawyers (or legal scholars) when it comes to resolving complex social and economic problems. Economists believe that human behavior and the functioning of institutions are based upon incentives. Lawyers and legal types believe that one can resolve complex problems by passing laws and imposing regulations. The latter think one can legislate away the problem.

ObamaCare: Designed for Failure. By Charles E. Moore
Excerpt: You must understand, no matter what President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid say, that ObamaCare was designed for failure, not just for itself but all the insurance companies involved. When a poison pill is ingested into the system, the body starts to die, killing off the healthy organs and itself in the process... leaving a void for something far worse to take its place. It has been the progressive's dream since 1912 to introduce national healthcare and control one-sixth of the nation's economy.

Excerpt: Unions haven’t been able to get special Obamacare subsidies like Members of Congress and their staffs did, but they may not go away empty-handed. The Obama Administration has indicated it will propose a new regulation that could give many unions a break from one of Obamacare’s new fees. This one hits health plans with a $63 per person charge next year.

Obama's Obamacare Lies Were Chronicled From the Beginning. By David Limbaugh
Excerpt: Don't you believe that President Obama's lies that people could keep their health insurance plans and doctors were his only lies about Obamacare or that these and the other lies were not demonstrably false when he uttered them.

Real Stories Expose Obama’s Lies. By Reince Priebus
Excerpt: Last week, the RNC launched GOP.com/TellUs, where those impacted by ObamaCare can share their stories and even upload pictures of letters canceling their coverage, pink slips from employers, or screenshots of healthcare.gov glitches. Responses have come pouring in from people who have been hurt by ObamaCare and by the president’s lies.

Quotes from Jonah Goldberg
"To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the unraveling of Obamacare." "Whenever I go on a college campus these days I try to hammer home this point: Your professors are liberal, your textbooks are liberal, your administrators are liberal, Hollywood is liberal, the music industry is liberal, the publishing business is liberal, the mainstream media is liberal, your high-school teachers were liberal . . . and yet you somehow believe you're sticking it to the man by being . . . liberal!"


Excerpt: A South Carolina man was diagnosed with cancer and his old insurance was providing him with the doctors and treatment he needed, but that insurance has been cancelled because Obamacare regulations. His new options are so expensive that he’s decided to give up and “let nature take its course” rather than put his family under the financial strain of paying for the new insurance that Obamacare requires. ... He voted for Obama in the last election, believing in his promise of more affordable health care.

John D. ‘Bud’ Hawk, World War II veteran and Medal of Honor recipient, dies at 89
Excerpt: John D. “Bud” Hawk, an Army sergeant who received the Medal of Honor for his heroism during a battle of the Normandy campaign that led to the Allied liberation of France in World War II, died Nov. 4 at his home in Bremerton, Wash. He was 89.

Don’t Forget the Other Entitlement Monsters. By Bruce Thornton 
Excerpt: The continuing attention devoted to the blunders, incompetence, and lies surrounding the Obamacare rollout is much deserved. But we shouldn’t forget that the President’s health-care monstrosity is merely the latest and biggest of scores of government entitlement programs suffering from the same flawed progressive assumption––that government “experts” armed with coercive power alone can solve problems better left to the states, civil society, and the free market. In reality, such programs relentlessly metastasize, increasing as well fraud, waste, abuse, and costs.

Iran is offered temporary relief from some sanctions if it freezes uranium enrichment
Excerpt: A deal that would give Iran limited relief from economic sanctions in exchange for a temporary freeze of some of its nuclear activities was near completion late Thursday, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry was preparing to fly to Geneva Friday morning for a likely announcement. (They will pretend to play. ~Bob)

Kerry leaves for Geneva; Netanyahu talks tough on Iran
Excerpt: "I understand the Iranians are walking around very satisfied in Geneva, as well they should be," said Netanyahu, visibly angered. "Iran got the deal of the century and the international community got a bad deal," Netanyahu said. He added that Israel "is not obliged by this agreement" and that it will do "everything it needs to defend itself and defend the security of its people."

The Real Reasons We Have a Public Pension Crisis. By Caleb O. Brown
Excerpt: Wall Street greed isn't to blame for the public pension crisis. Fund officials are in a frantic search for high returns, having been led to a desperate state by politicians.

U.S. Sugar Policy Sends Candy Makers Abroad
Excerpt: Despite a prolonged slide in domestic sugar prices, U.S. candy makers are expanding production in other countries as federal price supports and a global glut of the sweet stuff give an ever-greater advantage to foreign rivals, says the Wall Street Journal. A 50 percent drop in U.S. sugar prices in the last two years hasn't been enough to eliminate problems from a longtime price gap between domestic and foreign sugar.

Another Costly EPA Rule
Excerpt: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a revised proposed rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power facilities. This is the most recent component of the president's "Climate Action Plan," and follows two prior greenhouse gas rules that regulated the fuel economy of heavy-duty trucks and cars. Though this rule is not considered "economically significant," it will be devastating to new coal construction, say Catrina Rorke, director of energy and environmental policy, and Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy, at the American Action Forum. The limits on coal are based on estimates of emissions from facilities employing partial carbon capture and storage (CCS). The CCS requirement for new coal is a controversial red line for the industry.

Pakistani Taliban Pick Hard-Liner as Leader, Imperiling Proposed Peace Talks
Excerpt: Mr. Fazlullah is best known for ordering public beatings, executions and beheadings, and delivering thunderous radio broadcasts — in which he denounced polio vaccinations, among other topics — that earned him the nickname “Mullah Radio” in some circles.

Saudi nuclear weapons 'on order' from Pakistan
Excerpt: Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight. While the kingdom's quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran's atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic.

Lara Logan Apologizes For ’60 Minutes’ Benghazi Report: ‘We Were Wrong.’ By Madeleine Morgenstern
Excerpt: “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan apologized Friday for what CBS News is now acknowledging was a flawed report last month about the Benghazi attacks.

Excerpt: During my 22-year Air Force career I served two tours in Korea and three one-year tours in Vietnam. While in Vietnam I don't ever remember any reporter coming up to me to ask why I'm fighting there. Of course, with the media explosion of today we often see troops interviewed in the Middle East and are almost always asked if they believe the war is justified. Sometimes a troop will echo a justification for the war that he heard from a military or political leader. Often though, there is a hesitation before he or she just generally answers that their "fighting for their country".

Promise breakers: Congressional lawmakers shirk shutdown pledge, keep paychecks
Excerpt: Nearly half of Congress promised to share federal workers’ pain during the partial government shutdown by forsaking pay — but now that the shutdown is over and employees got paid, many lawmakers say they deserve their own checks.

French principal flees Qatar after claims of anti-Muslim attitudes. By Colin Randall
Excerpt: The principal of a French lycée in Qatar hurriedly left his job and the country in a deal struck by diplomats after being accused of having anti-Muslim attitudes and told he faced imprisonment.

Two Muslim Women Attack Jewish Man in Montreal
Excerpt: In Canada, a simple question by a Jewish man regarding a new controversial law in Quebec turned into a verbal and physical attack.

Iranian TV airs animated strike on Tel Aviv, Dimona
Excerpt: Iranian state television aired a computer-animated video that showed an imagined Iranian missile strike on Israeli cities including Tel Aviv and Dimona, malls and IDF bases.

Father Fed Knows Best: Government force and fraud is for our own good. By Jonah Goldberg
Excerpt: The government thinks you’re stupid, or at least ignorant. This isn’t just an indictment of the current government or an indictment of government itself. It’s simply a statement of fact. At its core, the government exists to do certain things that people aren’t equipped to do on their own. The list of those things has gotten longer and longer over the years. 

US Eyes Anti-Piracy Effort Along West Africa Coast

Excerpt: The U.S. and some of its allies are considering plans to increase anti-piracy operations along Africa's west coast, spurred on by concerns that money from the attacks is funding a Nigerian-based insurgent group that is linked to one of al-Qaida's most dangerous affiliates. (But if they can't just hang the pirates when they find them (as was SOP back in the day), it won't work out anywhere nearly as efficiently. Maybe the pirates will be stupid enough to resist. That would be better, really. --Del)

2 comments:

  1. Obamacare makes me sick.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Regarding the alleged market filled with "bad apple" insurance policies. Someone should point out to Dear Leader that insurance is a heavily regulated industry. Indeed, every state has its own regulatory scheme. Secretary Sebelius might have mentioned this to her boss, as she was once Insurance Commissioner of Kansas.

    ReplyDelete