Thursday, October 31, 2013

Ted Cruz criticizes DOJ for arguing international treaty can trump the Constitution | WashingtonExaminer.com

Ted Cruz criticizes DOJ for arguing international treaty can trump the Constitution | WashingtonExaminer.com

Ted Cruz criticizes DOJ for arguing international treaty can trump the Constitution

By JOEL GEHRKE | OCTOBER 30, 2013 AT 3:50 PM
Justice Department attorneys are advancing an argument at the Supreme Court that could allow the government to invoke international treaties as a legal basis for policies such as gun control that conflict with the U.S. Constitution, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Their argument is that a law implementing an international treaty signed by the U.S. allows the federal government to prosecute a criminal case that would normally be handled by state or local authorities.
That is a dangerous argument, according to Cruz.
"The Constitution created a limited federal government with only specific enumerated powers," Cruz told the Washington Examiner prior to giving a speech on the issue today at the Heritage Foundation.
"The Supreme Court should not interpret the treaty power in a manner that undermines this bedrock protection of individual liberty,” Cruz said.
In his speech, Cruz said the Justice Department is arguing "an absurd proposition" that "could be used as a backdoor way to undermine" Second Amendment rights, among other things.
The underlying case, Bond v. United States, involves a woman charged with violating the international ban on chemical weapons because she used toxic chemicals to harass a former friend who had an affair with her husband.
Under the Constitution, such an offense would be handled at the state level. In Bond's case, the federal government prosecuted her under the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act.
That law implements the Chemical Weapons Convention, the international treaty Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is accused of violating in that country's vicious civil war.
"The problem here is precisely that Congress, rather than implementing the treaty consistent with our constitutional system of federalism, enacted a statute that, if construed to apply to petitioner’s conduct, would violate basic structural guarantees and exceed Congress's enumerated powers," according to Bond's lawyers.
The Judicial Crisis Network's Carrie Severino said the Bond case could have ramifications for many other issues.
"If the administration is right, the treaty power could become a backdoor way for the federal government to do everything from abolishing the death penalty nationwide, to outlawing homeschooling, to dramatically curtailing the states' rights to regulate abortion," she told the Washington Examiner.
The Judicial Crisis Network is a conservative legal activist group.

Another Obamacare shoe drops: Docs not participating

Another Obamacare shoe drops: Docs not participating

Another Obamacare shoe drops: Docs not participating

Rick Moran
Obamacare might be signing up millions of people who never had insurance before but it is going to be difficult in some places for them to find a doctor to treat them.

New York Post:

New York doctors are treating ObamaCare like the plague, a new survey reveals.
A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nation's new health-care plan.
Another 33 percent say they're still not sure whether to become ObamaCare providers.
Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said they're taking patients who signed up through health exchanges.
"This is so poorly designed that a lot of doctors are afraid to participate," said Dr. Sam Unterricht, president of the 29,000-member organization. "There's a lot of resistance. Doctors don't know what they're going to get paid."
Three out of four doctors who are participating in the program said they "had to participate" because of existing contractual obligations with an insurer or medical provider, not because they wanted to.
Only one in four "affirmatively" chose to sign up for the exchanges.
Nearly eight in 10 - 77 percent - said they had not been given a fee schedule to show much they'll get paid if they sign up.
The survey invited doctors to anonymously share opinions about the new health care law, and many took time out of their busy days to vent.
"Obama Care wants to start right away, but who see all these new patients???? Not me," e-mailed one doc.
Another said, "I plan to retire if this disaster is implemented. This is a train wreck."
"I refuse to participate in the exchange plans! I am completely opposed to this new law," said a third respondent.
One doctor recycled the mantra used to attack addictions: "The solution is simple: Just say no."
One physician was so disgusted, he threatened to taken only cash patients going forward.
"I am seriously considering opting out of all insurance plans including Medicare because of [ObamaCare]."
Some physicians said the pressure on insurance carriers to control costs is leading to rationed care.
"OBAMACARE is a disaster. I have already seen denial of medication, denial of referrals," one doc said.
And they worry that stingy payments for medical services offered by insurers could put some doctors out of business and force others into retirement.
"Any doctor who accepts the exchange is just a bad businessman/woman. Pays terrible," argued one doctor.
And these are doctors from blue state New York. What do you think doctors in some red states are saying about Obamacare?
Not to sound like a broken record, but this aspect of Obamacare was predicted over and over again during the debates. Warnings about doctors "going Galt," or not accepting any new Medicare or Medicaid patients, or dropping out of private practice altogether were continuously made before the law was passed.
Saying "I told you so" is cold comfort when the chilling effects of Obamacare become plain to everyone.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/10/another_obamacare_shoe_drops_docs_not_participating.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook#ixzz2jJv2TGS3
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Time to use the f-word about Obamacare

Time to use the f-word about Obamacare

Time to use the f-word about Obamacare

Thomas Lifson
The word is "fraud." It is now clear that the American people and their representatives in Congress were lied to, in order to obtain passage of Obamacare. When someone is induced to undertake an action based on false representations, that constitutes fraud. Investor's Business Daily  lays out the calculation that motivated the fraud.
Back in 1994, when Bill Clinton was pushing his own version of "comprehensive health reform," the insurance industry launched its infamous "Harry and Louise" ads to deliver a simple message: The Clinton plan would force families to give up their own health plans.
In one of these, the middle-class couple pours (sic) over a pile of documents at the kitchen table, while a narrator intones about how "things are changing, and not all for the better," and how "the government may force us to pick from a few plans designed by government bureaucrats."
"Louise" then complains that "having choices we don't like is no choice at all," and the ad concludes with the couple saying, "They choose, and we lose."
The campaign was devastating. Even though Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, Clinton's bill never made it out of congressional committees.
So when President Obama decided to take another stab at health care, he was determined to avoid that pitfall. He endlessly promised in the most emphatic way possible that under his plan, Harry and Louise would have nothing to worry about.
"Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you," the president said at a July 2009 rally in New Jersey. "First of all, if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you."
NBC News has already uncovered evidence that members of the president's staff knew that millions of people would not be able to keep their insurance. It may be possible to claim that the president was so preoccupied with his golf game, bracketology, parties, and TV that he was unaware. "President Bystander" as the GOP now correctly labels him. But incompetence does not negate the fraudulent nature of the passage of Obamacare.  
On this ground alone, aside from all the others, the law ought to be repealed.

Pelosi: People getting their insurance cancelled for their own good

Pelosi: People getting their insurance cancelled for their own good

Pelosi: People getting their insurance cancelled for their own good

Rick Moran
Another day, another slew of Democratic talking points on the disaster that is Obamacare. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sought to soothe the hurt feelings of people who were bumped off their insurance plans because of the law by making the startling claim that it's for their own good.

The Hill:

"While you might like your old plan, what you're going to get under the new plan is that [it does] not discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions, does not deny you a key benefit like ... maternal, mental health or prescription drug coverage and cannot drop you when you are sick," Pelosi said during a press conference in the Capitol. 
"These are part of the 'patients' bill of rights,' which is a vast improvement over other plans."
Pelosi said the sharp rise in medical costs, combined with the transient nature of the individual insurance market, would eventually have forced people out of their individual plans - ObamaCare or none.
"No matter what people say about whether they like their plan or not, their plan was not going to be their plan," she said. "Everybody's premiums were going up."
Pelosi noted that only about 5 percent of Americans are enrolled in the individual plans most likely to fall short of ObamaCare's minimum benefit requirements. And within that group, she added, many patients will be able to keep their existing coverage because the new rules apply only to plans established or altered after the law was enacted.
"If you were in a plan in 2010 when the president said, 'If you're in a plan and you like your plan you can keep your plan,' you can [keep your plan]," Pelosi said. "If you've enrolled since then, you'll get a conversion letter."

First, note the subtlety in changing what Obama actually said. Obama never mentioned the 2010 cutoff date when promising Americans they could keep their insurance, nor did he say anything about losing your policy if it was altered.

Also note how a policy "cancellation" has become a "conversion letter." The fact that you are likely to pay a lot more for coverage as well as doubling or tripling your deductible makes the idea of "conversion" sound silly.

But it is Pelosi's spinning the idea that a policy bought through the exchanges is better than what you had previously because it offers maternity (or contraceptive) coverage - even if you're a 60 year old grandma -, or mental health coverage, or other "benefits" you will probably never use, that makes her talking points so dishonest.

Meanwhile, House #3 Democrat Steny Hoyer treats us to his differentiation between a lie and bad "messaging":

On Tuesday, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the minority whip, rejected the notion that the Democrats misled the public when they pitched the Affordable Care Act. But the messaging, he acknowledged, "was not precise enough." 
"Clearly, it should have been caveated with, 'Assuming you have a policy that, in fact, does do what the bill is designed to do,' " Hoyer said.
Try that with your boss and see what happens:
Me: Sorry boss, when I told you I completed the Mansfield file, my messaging wasn't precise enough. I haven't touched it.
Boss: You're fired.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/10/pelosi_people_getting_their_insurance_cancelled_for_their_own_good.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook#ixzz2jJuJRDud
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This "thank you" letter to Barack Obama has gone viral. Read it and share!:

This "thank you" letter to Barack Obama has gone viral. Read it and share!:

 Dear President Obama,
I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for all you have done and are doing. You see I am a single Mom located in the very small town of Palmer,Texas. I live in a small rental house with my two children. I drive an older car that I pray daily runs just a little longer. I work at a mediocre job bringing home a much lower paycheck than you or your wife could even imagine living on. I have a lot of concerns about the new “Obamacare” along with the taxes being forced on us Americans and debts your are adding to our country. I have a few questions for you Mr. President. Have you ever struggled to pay your bills? I have. Have you ever sat and watched your children eat and you eat what was left on their plates when they were done, because there wasn’t enough for you to eat to? I have. Have you ever had to rob Peter to pay Paul, and it still not be enough? I have. Have you ever been so sick that you needed to see a doctor and get medicine, but had no health insurance because it was to expensive? I have. Have you ever had to tell your children no, when they asked for something they needed? I have. Have you ever patched holes in pants, glued shoes, replaced zippers, because it was cheaper than buying new? I have. Have you ever had to put an item or two back at the grocery store, because you didn’t have enough money? I have. Have you ever cried yourself to sleep, because you had no clue how you were going to make ends meet? I have. My questions could go on and on. I don’t believe you have a clue what Americans are actually going through and honestly, I don’t believe you care. Not everyone lives extravagantly. While your family takes expensive trips that cost more than most of us make in two-four years, there are so many of us that suffer. Yet, you are doing all you can to add to the suffering. I think you are a very selfish and cold hearted man, who does not care what is best for the people he was elected by (not by me) to represent, but more so out for the glory of your name attached to history. So thank you Mr. President, thank you for pushing those of us that are barely staying afloat completely under water and driving America into the ground. You have made your mark in history, as the absolute worst and most hated president of the United States. 
God have mercy on your soul! 

Sincerely, Yolanda Vestal Average American 
 www.startimpeachmentnow.com

Valerie Jarrett: Obamacare doesn’t force you off your plan; your insurance company does, by complying with Obamacare! « Hot Air

Valerie Jarrett: Obamacare doesn’t force you off your plan; your insurance company does, by complying with Obamacare! 

Valerie Jarrett: Obamacare doesn’t force you off your plan; your insurance company does, by complying with Obamacare!

posted at 10:01 pm on October 28, 2013 by Mary Katharine Ham

It’s just one tweet, but the sheer mendacity requires its own post. With the media finally in “now it can be told” mode since Obamacare passed and President Obama was reelected, pretty much everyone is admitting what all of us knew four years ago— that no, not everyone would be able to keep their plans if they liked their plans. And, yes, the Obama administration knew it just as sure as its critics did.
It was a lie and an obvious one, but the administration, much of the media, and Obamacare supporters happily acted as if it were true and happily smeared those who suggested otherwise. Tonight, the president’s right-hand woman tries the lie again, even as it’s demonstrably unraveling before the nation’s eyes.
Let’s try to walk through this inanity. There’s nothing in Obamacare that forces people out of their health plans. Instead, Jarrett asserts, insurance companies are just deciding to change their plans, throwing people off their current coverage.
She leaves out the part where Obamacare legally requires all health insurance plans to include a certain number of benefits that was above and beyond what many more, ahem, affordable plans offered, thereby making certain plans illegal. Many of those plans were plans that people liked and were assured they could keep. Obamacare offered a “grandfathering” clause, which the administration later eviscerated after it had served its political purpose, ensuring even more people would lose their current coverage. So, no change is required by you under Obamacare unless your insurance company goes and changes your existing plan to comply with Obamacare.
Update: This isn’t just one yes-woman’s delusion. It’s a talking point. Unbelievable:
Even the most reliably hacky Obamacare supporters have at least conceded that people are losing their old plans because of Obamacare. They spin it with the notion that these new plans are way better, so why would you have liked that dumb old plan anyway (which fit within your family’s budget and served you well)? But the act of spinning requires at least some reckoning with the truth.
What level of denial and/or mendacity is necessary to tweet this? What confidence that the media will be there to cover your lies? This is the mindset of the people surrounding President Obama, and because no one’s ever held accountable for screwing up, this is the mindset of those who are “fixing” Obamacare’s problems.
In this case, I think Jarrett’s confidence in media to toe her line is misplaced. The dam seems to be breaking, at long last, on this falsehood. But who could blame her for thinking it’d hold up? This is the level of compliance she’s used to.
Sadly, the truth comes too late for all those losing the plans they liked. They can use their cancellation letters to refute Jarrett’s lie, as one of my Twitter friends did, but it’s cold comfort. Maybe they should all CC Politifact:
Charles Cooke of National Review was refuting Jarrett’s tweet tonight when he attracted a response from a liberal Obamacare defender:
Total B.S., meet low-information voter. That’s why they do it. But this time, the truth is arriving in thousands of mailboxes, and costing each family thousands. It’s going to get harder to convince them they’re not seeing what they’re seeing.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Obama tells insurance companies to shut up, if they know what's good for them | Human Events

Obama tells insurance companies to shut up, if they know what's good for them | Human Events

Obama tells insurance companies to shut up, if they know what’s good for them

Obama tells insurance companies to shut up, if they know what's good for them More thug tactics from a White House that is no stranger to them, as CNN reports insurance companies have been warned to dummy up about the ObamaCare disaster if they know what’s good for them:
“What is going on is a behind-the-scenes attempt by the White House to at least keep insurers from publicly criticizing what is happening on this Affordable Care Act rollout,” reports Andrew Griffin of CNN.  ”Basically, if you speak out, if you are quoted, you’re going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet.”
According to Griffin’s sources, Bob Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates – a prominent consultant for insurance companies with a history of criticizing ObamaCare – says he’s getting calls from the executives he works with, asking him to speak out on their behalf, “because they feel defenseless against the White House PR team.”
Laszewski told Griffin, “The White House is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet.”  Industry sources confirmed “they fear White House retribution.”
Well, if you give massive amounts of power to people with a history of thug behavior, you can’t be surprised if they turn around and use it.  Maybe the industry executives who were initially supportive of ObamaCare, because they saw glittering piles of taxpayer loot and loved the idea of their product becoming a federally-mandated purchase for everyone with a pulse, should have thought that all the way through back in 2008 and 2009.  Obama’s governing philosophy requires a great deal of obedience from a private sector he keeps nominally separate from the government.  There are many tools for compelling obedience.  If the White House PR flacks can’t get the job done, there’s always the IRS.
The White House is especially keen to keep insurance companies from talking about “clarifications made to the Affordable Care Act after the law was passed,” which are “forcing the insurance industry to drop insurance plans that do not meet ObamaCare requirements.”
That was the topic of the blockbuster NBC News report that got blockbustered right the hell off the Internet on Monday night, reappearing hours later with the least Obama-friendly paragraphs mysteriously removed, before an outcry from media watchdogs caused them to reappear.  It looks like another round of “glitches” over at NBC’s website have been purging comments posted by readers to this piece, while that fine news organization has become curiously reluctant to talk about its own reporting.  Lisa Myers, the lead reporter on the story, didn’t even mention her most explosive findings – there is documentation that proves Obama knew he was lying when he repeatedly promised “if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it,” and regulations promulgated by Health and Human Services are deliberately killing hundreds of thousands of insurance policies – when she appeared on television to discuss it.
Here, once again, is the atomic bomb passage from that NBC report, which the network knows is true, but seems to have become hesitant to explore any further, just like insurance company executives are afraid to tell their side of the ObamaCare story:
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”
None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.
As it happens, Bob Laszewski – the man terrified insurance executives want to speak out against White House intimidation – was quoted in that article:
“This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” said  Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consultant who works for health industry firms. Laszewski estimates that 80 percent of those in the individual market will not be able to keep their current policies and will have to buy insurance that meets requirements of the new law, which generally requires a richer package of benefits than most policies today.
[...] For months, Laszewski has warned that some consumers will face sticker shock. He recently got his own notice that he and his wife cannot keep their current policy, which he described as one of the best, so-called “Cadillac” plans offered for 2013. Now, he said, the best comparable plan he found for 2014 has a smaller doctor network, larger out-of-pocket costs, and a 66 percent premium increase.
“Mr. President, I like the coverage I have,” Laszweski said. “It is the best health insurance policy you can buy.”
Of course insurance companies don’t want to be painted as heartless villains – veritable traitors against the American people – for following laws ignorantly signed by corrupt Democrats who didn’t bother to read them, and regulations deliberately written by the Obama Administration.  And of course this increasingly desperate White House wants to keep its Little Partners silent while they take the fall for Obama’s failure.  Snitches get stitches if they squeal about ObamaCare glitches.

Holman Jenkins: The ObamaCare Outrage Arrives - WSJ.com

Holman Jenkins: The ObamaCare Outrage Arrives 

The Outrage Arrives

You can't keep your insurance because Democrats don't want you to control your own health-care spending.


Oct. 29, 2013 7:17 p.m. ET

The White House has issued a clarification. When the president said if you like your insurance plan you can keep it, what he meant was you can keep it if he likes it.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans who are getting policy cancellation notices this month can't be as surprised as they pretend to be. President Obama made it clear at his 2010 health care summit what he thought of their taste in insurance.
"It's the equivalent of Acme Insurance that I had for my car. . . . It's basically not health insurance," he explained. "It's house insurance. . . .
"I'm buying that to protect me from some catastrophic situation; otherwise, I'm just paying out of pocket. I don't go to the doctor. I don't get preventive care. There are a whole bunch of things I just do without. But if I get hit by a truck, maybe I don't go bankrupt."
Notice his disdain for those who buy high-deductible policies to protect themselves only from unexpected and unmanageable health-care costs. They are too cheap or too dumb to reach into their own pockets for necessary care that isn't covered by their policy or triggers the deductible.
These customers might like their plan. Their plan might even be the best cure, as many experts believe, for what ails our health-care system, namely too much incentive for Americans to overconsume health care. But Mr. Obama doesn't like their plans so they can't keep them.
Democrats at least are consistent. Back in 1993, during the fight over HillaryCare, Mrs. Clinton explained Democratic reasoning to then-House GOP Leader Denny Hastert. If Americans are allowed too much discretion over how they spend their health-care dollars, Mrs. Clinton said, "We just think people will be too focused on saving money and they won't get the care for their children and themselves that they need . . .
"The money has to go to the federal government because the federal government will spend that money better."
Not only was it deliberate ObamaCare policy to make sure plans millions of Americans like would no longer be available, forcing them to buy more coverage than they want or need. NBC reports that the White House—as Mr. Obama was promising Americans they could keep their current plans—was estimating at least seven million people would not be allowed to keep their current plans.
In drafting rules to put ObamaCare into effect, the Health and Human Services department under Kathleen Sebelius tightened the grandfathering eligibility to make sure even more people would be forced to switch to the excessively costly policies that Mr. Obama wants them to buy. Mr. Obama says he cares about your incentive to get preventive care or tests that you may not get if they don't appear to involve a free lunch.
But the truth is, he wants you to pay for coverage you'll never use (mental-health services, cancer wigs, fertility treatments, Viagra) so the money can be spent on somebody else.
A nod goes to the Los Angeles Times, whose coverage of the inequities of ObamaCare has been exemplary. On Monday, it set the political world afire with a story about thousands of Californians losing coverage. "This is when the actual sticker shock comes into play for people," UCLA health-care researcher Gerald Kominski told the paper. "There are winners and losers under the Affordable Care Act."
The press stinks at covering abstractions, which the health-care debate was until a law was enacted and put into effect. With real-world results now to unpack and examine, NBC News gave airtime to a 62-year-old North Carolina man whose monthly premium just jumped $800: "I'm sitting here looking at this, thinking we ought to just pay the fine and just get insurance when we're sick. Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not, but that's fixable. That's just the tip of the iceberg. This stuff isn't fixable."
The Affordable Care Act was never going to make care more affordable, except for those receiving a big subsidy at the expense of taxpayers or other insurance buyers. A non-listening press might have known better if it had paid attention in the most admirable moment of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, when the candidate disabused a generation of liberal reporters by saying that covering the uninsured might be desirable for other reasons, but health-care costs would be driven out of sight once the government began subsidizing another large group of Americans to overconsume.
ObamaCare probably won't succeed in covering even a majority of the uninsured. It will succeed, though, in forcing millions of Americans to buy more expensive insurance than they need or want, because that's the insurance Mr. Obama likes and will let them keep.

Articles: Liberalism = Unhappyism

Articles: Liberalism = Unhappyism

Liberalism = Unhappyism

By Derrick Wilburn


A few days ago I had the displeasure of once again listening to MSNBC personality and radio talk show host Ed Schultz go absolutely ballistic on a caller who happened to have the gall to disagree with him. In this instance the caller was a retired 23-year veteran of the United States' armed forces who called into Schultz's show to help set the record straight concerning the effect on active duty and retired military of the healthcare law. Schultz gave the caller all of about twenty seconds before becoming thoroughly unglued, hollering at one of our vets, berating him, calling him "full of crap", disparaging and ultimately hanging up on him. The exchange may be heard here.
This is far from unusual behavior from the progressive left. As a person who blogs, writes and sends newsletters, tweets, and administers multiple Facebooks I log a lot of e-miles every week. And in those journeys I encounter many, many progressive liberals, and boy are they upset. Even though they've been in control of the country for the last seven years! They call into talk shows, bang away on keyboards, and post comments that ultimately come back to the basic premise of, "If you don't think or believe as I think or believe -- you are an idiot."
I've reached the conclusion that liberals, especially hard left ultra-liberal/progressives, exist in a state of  unhappy discontents. I don't mean these people never smile, have no friends, and just sit around in the dark, sulking all day. It's not so much that they're 'unhappy people' -- though many are -- as much as they're constantly unhappy with their own, their nation's, and the world's situation. They're seldom if ever happy with the way things are and thus always on a war path to change things.
Think about how our president campaigned and won. "Hope and Change" was his slogan for the 2008 election. Prior to his first swearing in he quipped, "We're just five days away from fundamentally changing America." Why the need for all this change? You typically want to change something if you're not happy about its current state. This is the mantra of left-wing liberalism, "We've got to change all this because the way it is now stinks." This seems to be how they feel about virtually everything.
While conservatives basically want to be left alone, believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility, and limited governmental intrusion, left-wingers want their preferences to become your laws and to impose their belief system on everyone.
Consider these examples: As a conservative, if you don't want to purchase a 40-ounce soda, what do you do? Simple. Not purchase a 40 ounce soda; get a 20 ounce instead. But if a left-wing liberal doesn't want a 40-ounce soda, what do they do? They seek to pass laws so that nobody can purchase a 40-ounce soda. If a conservative chooses not to smoke he or she doesn't buy cigarettes, doesn't smoke. But if a left-winger doesn't want to smoke they pass laws banning it for everybody or at least for as many as possible. A conservative thinks a clip that holds 20 rounds is too large for her firearm, she buys a 10-round clip. A left-wing liberal has the same thought and they're standing on the capitol steps waiving signs decrying how NOBODY should be able to purchase and own a 20-round clip.
A conservative doesn't think prayer prior to a high school football game is appropriate (not that a true conservative likely would), he simply withholds his child from the prayer session. But a liberal with the same thought goes on the war path. "We've got to end that practice! Not my children nor anyone's children should be out there praying!" "...well, not to Jesus, anyway." And they lawyer up, contact the ACLU, get letters into the local newspapers and do everything in their power to end the practice of praying before games.
And this list goes on and on and on. They're perpetually not happy with something, and so seek to pass laws to make their level of unhappiness the rule of the land for EVERYONE, whether everyone else was also unhappy about it or not. Left-wing liberalism is a perpetual state of "This sucks, we need laws to change it to the way I want it to be!" And if you don't want things to be the way that I want them to be, well, then you're an idiot. Or a racist. Or a Neanderthal. Or, most likely, all of the above. One need look no further for evidence than New York City's uber-left mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who in his eleven years as mayor has forced through laws regulating sugary drink sizes, table salt in restaurants, smoking limits, and a gaggle of other restrictions and regulations.
My two Facebook pages (Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives and American Conservatives of Color get visited and bombed every day by this brand of unhappy often downright angry left-wing ideologues. Their participation is as predictable as the sunrise. Inevitably they begin spewing emotion, name-calling, and vileness almost immediately. With some exceptions, precious few approach discussion from a standpoint of logic, reason, statistics, and factual analysis. Their participation is typically much more like Mr. Schultz's engagement of the military retiree -- yelling and anger. For reasons unknown, vast numbers of hard lefties are simply not happy.
Were it not for being discontented with the present state of things, were it not for the constant drive to change things so that "I'll be happier with them" left-wing liberalism would cease to exist. They're getting 'hope and change' by the bucketful right now and have been for nearly five years. But visit left-wing websites, blogs, or Facebook pages and what do you see? People ranting and railing about virtually everything. We're getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan at this very moment, yet on these sites posts are dedicated daily to "George Bush and Dick Cheney's phony war on terror!" The "Affordable Healthcare Act" is the law of the land and is being implemented as you read this, yet rather than celebrate, lefties invest massive amounts of time directing their ire toward the party that didn't vote for it. Rare is the leftist blog or column filled with praise, adoration, and thanksgiving toward this awesome nation of ours. Seems about 99.96% of the time it's some version of "this sucks!"
Were it not for being discontented with the present state of things; were it not for the constant drive to change things so that "I'll be happier with them," left-wing liberalism would cease to exist. Even the most casual perusing of various progressive organization's websites will result in discovery of extremely consistent themes. They are all, all about change. There are literally thousands of such organizations and websites, all obsessed with changing. Consider the "Advancement Project" (literally one I picked randomly from thousands). The final sentence of their mission statement, "We use innovative tools and strategies to strengthen social movements and achieve high impact policy change." Prominent on their "About Us" page? "Our theory of change."
From a political point of view, these are just plain unhappy people. For the moment anyway, they're running the show. One can't help but to wonder if sooner or later people will get tired of all the sucking on lemons. Because when and if they do, the political tides may just begin to turn.

Review & Outlook: Rocky Mountain High Taxes - WSJ.com

Review & Outlook: Rocky Mountain High Taxes 

Rocky Mountain High Taxes

Democrats and unions try to kill Colorado's flat tax.


Oct. 23, 2013 7:25 p.m. ET

Colorado has veered to the political left in recent years, and on November 5 it may take another leap toward California. The Democrats and unions who now run state government are promoting a ballot initiative that would raise taxes and unleash a brave new era of liberal governance.
The Colorado Tax Increase for Education, or Amendment 66, follows the well-trod union script of claiming to raise taxes in the name of better schools. Its real purpose is to repeal restraints on tax increases and open the door to even higher taxes and more spending on everything.
The referendum would repeal the state's current flat income-tax rate of 4.63% that liberals loathe because raising it requires raising taxes on nearly all Coloradans. And sure enough, Amendment 66 would raise the rate to 5% on income up to $75,000, and to 5.9% on all higher earners. That's a 26.6% tax increase on anyone making more than $75,000 a year.
That's also a $950 million revenue increase for politicians in the first year alone, but the real prize is down the road. Once a graduated tax code is in place, unions and Democrats will try again and again to raise tax rates on "the rich." This has happened everywhere Democrats have run the show in the last decade, from Maryland to Connecticut, New York, Oregon and California. Within a decade, the top tax rate will be closer to 8% or 9%.
Colorado's liberals may aspire to join the left coasts, but that won't make the state any more competitive in its interior U.S. neighborhood, where states like Kansas and Oklahoma are cutting tax rates. High-tax states created one net new job for every four in states without an income tax from 2002-2012, according to a study for the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Polls show that the main issue for Colorado voters now is the economy. That's not surprising given that household incomes in Colorado remain 7.2% below pre-recession levels, according to Census Bureau data. A 2011 study by Ernst & Young found that more than half a million small businesses in Colorado, or 92% of all in-state businesses, pay taxes at individual tax rates and thus would face a tax increase under Amendment 66.
The sales pitch is that this tax windfall is earmarked for education, but if you believe that you must be a college professor. Amendment 66 states that "at least 43% of state sales, excise and income tax revenues" must be spent on education. The main result would be to make spending on education untouchable in the future and to make it harder for politicians to set priorities.
Unions know that money is fungible, so a tax increase earmarked for education means that other revenue can be used to delay reform in the state's badly underfunded public teacher pension plan. Funding for Medicaid, roads and other state priorities won't decrease, so earmarking more for education would increase pressure for another tax increase. It's no accident that Amendment 66 states that "all tax revenues attributable to this measure to be collected and spent without future voter approval."
The language of Amendment 66 also includes no reforms in return for the new cash—no teacher accountability, no increase in school choice, and no pension reforms. Supporters say it would allow for implementation of a state legislative reform, but unions are already trying to block that.
The initiative is also an attempt to bail out Denver schools by taking more cash from the rest of the state. For every $1 the scheme would take from suburban school districts, such as Jefferson and Douglas counties, the state would send back 50 to 60 cents, according to the state treasurer's office. The state funding formula already encourages counties to raise property tax rates in order to get more state cash, so this tax increase will only be round one.
A new study by the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business found close to zero relationship between changes in per pupil spending on Colorado schools and changes in test scores and graduation rates. It notes, for example, that "although Cotopaxi School District received nearly a 36% increase" in per pupil funding from 2007-12, the highest in the state, "its test scores dropped by 8.3%."
As recently as 2011, Colorado voters voted down a state sales and income-tax increase, but the unions keep coming. And it's no surprise they've already put $2 million behind Amendment 66. If it passes, they know they'll get a big return on that political investment for decades to come. If it does pass, we'll also know that millions of Coloradans have taken to smoking that marijuana they legalized last year.

Where the Buck Stops, Some See a Bystander - NYTimes.com

Where the Buck Stops, Some See a Bystander 

Where the Buck Stops, Some See a Bystander

Doug Mills/The New York Times
Opposition lawmakers and pundits have seized on the White House's explanations that Mr. Obama was unaware of problems to accuse him of being a “bystander president.”
WASHINGTON — President Obama finds himself under fire on two disparate fronts these days, both for the botched rollout of his signature health care program and for the secret spying on allied heads of state. In both instances, his explanation roughly boils down to this: I didn’t know.
As a practical matter, no president can be aware of everything going on in the sprawling government he theoretically manages. But as a matter of politics, Mr. Obama’s plea of ignorance may do less to deflect blame than to prompt new questions about just how much in charge he really is.
In recent days, the president’s health and human services secretary said that despite internal concerns and a failed test run Mr. Obama was not told about serious problems with the new program’s website until it was rolled out this month. Other officials said the president was not aware that the National Security Agency was tapping the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other friendly leaders until this summer, although intelligence officials said Tuesday that others in the White House had known.
Opposition lawmakers and pundits have seized on the White House explanations to accuse Mr. Obama of being a “bystander president,” as the Republican National Committee put it. Even some Democrats are scratching their heads at the seeming detachment from significant matters. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” ran a montage of clips showing Mr. Obama or his aides disclaiming presidential knowledge of various issues as well as a graphic titled “Implausible Deniability.”
“It seems to me there’s a pattern here — with any bad news coming out of the administration, the excuse is the president just didn’t know about it,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois.
“There’s a point at which the I-didn’t-know excuse really violates the idea of the buck stops here,” he added. “We want to have a feeling that the president ultimately takes responsibility. The American people want to know they have a president who’s in control and in charge.”
Democrats were less likely to blame the president but suggested that he was ill served if other officials did not keep him fully abreast. “If people really knew there were to be problems, I was a little surprised that people at the highest levels weren’t aware,” Patrick Griffin, who was a top White House official under President Bill Clinton, said of the health care program.
As for the N.S.A. surveillance, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, put it sharply in a statement she released earlier this week. “It is my understanding that President Obama was not aware Chancellor Merkel’s communications were being collected since 2002,” she said. “That is a big problem.”
Aides dismissed suggestions that Mr. Obama did not pay enough attention in either of these areas. On the spying program, they said the president was deeply immersed in details of the nation’s surveillance practices but was focused on those areas that constituted the major threats to the United States. He had no reason to suspect that Ms. Merkel or other leaders of close allies were being tapped, nor did he think to grill anyone about it because that was not a high priority, they said.
   On health care, aides said that Mr. Obama had been fixated on details of the law’s carrying out and that advisers did not withhold information but were likewise surprised by the scope of the problems.
  “From the moment the health care bill was signed into law the president was very focused on making sure it was implemented correctly,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior White House adviser. “In just about every meeting, he pushed the team on whether the website was going to work. Unfortunately, it did not, and he’s very frustrated.”
Mr. Pfeiffer insisted that the president wants to hear what he needs to hear and would not accept advisers’ keeping negative information from him. “He’ll know if you don’t tell him the bad news he needs to hear, and that’s the quickest way to be on the outside looking in,” Mr. Pfeiffer said.
The challenge for any president is keeping on top of a vast array of issues, any one of which could blow up at any given time. Harry S. Truman spoke for many of his successors when he said that “the pressures and complexities of the presidency have grown to a state where they are almost too much for one man to endure.” And that was decades before metadata technology came along. 
  A famous question posed by Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee in a far different context — What did the president know and when did he know it? — has been a staple of political controversies in the 40 years since Watergate. Jimmy Carter was accused of being too immersed in details, including who would use the White House tennis courts, while Ronald Reagan was criticized for being too hands off, particularly when he insisted that he did not know about details of the Iran-contra operation.
Accusations that Mr. Obama is removed from the details of his programs are somewhat surprising given the reputation the president developed early in his administration for intense, consuming interest in the particulars. Before ordering more troops to Afghanistan, for instance, Mr. Obama conducted what amounted to an exhaustive three-month series of seminars on the region.
But on other issues, he has seemed uninvolved at significant junctures. He has said he learned from news reports about Operation Fast and Furious, a botched federal investigation into gun smuggling that allowed weapons to fall into criminals’ hands.
His staff knew about an investigation into the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service, but did not tell him until it was becoming public. Likewise, aides said the president was unaware of a Justice Department decision to secretly obtain reporters’ phone logs in a leak case.
Still, those cases underscore the difficult choices in what to tell a president. Aides determined that it would be inappropriate, not to mention politically risky, for the president to have advance knowledge of the I.R.S. investigation. A president, they said, should not be involved in such investigations or law enforcement cases because if he were it could politicize them.
John Tuck, who was a White House aide under Reagan, said he was not as bothered as other Republicans about Mr. Obama’s not knowing about the problems with the health care system in advance. “I would never put the finger on somebody saying he should have known or might have known,” Mr. Tuck said. “What difference does it make if he knew or he didn’t know?”
But in any White House, he said, the typical pattern is to try to insulate the president from responsibility for bad news. “If you had a good story, you brought it to the White House,” he said. “If you had a bad story, you put it out to the department that was responsible for it.”

Sebelius: ObamaCare To Bring 'Western Civilization To Its Knees'

 Posted 
Health Care: In a stunning admission, our Health and Human Services secretary admits ObamaCare is part of the fundamental transformation of America away from a free market in anything to a nanny state on steroids.
Maybe Kathleen Sebelius was being sarcastic, or maybe she thought it might be a good way to reach the "young invincibles" who feel they had better things to do with their money than enroll in ObamaCare. But her recent appearance on Jon Stewart's show on Comedy Central went about as well as ObamaCare's train wreck of a rollout.
Stewart hammered her and ObamaCare, as we have, on why she and President Obama granted delays for employers and insurers in their mandates, while individuals were still being forced into the comedy central known as the ObamaCare exchanges.
Failing to get a straight answer, Stewart pointed out that businesses are basing hiring decisions now based on ObamaCare's expensive regulatory straightjacket. He noted that businesses are cutting worker hours to exploit a loophole in the law, but Sebelius denied it.
Then in a moment of intended sarcasm that was really one of unintentional honesty, the U.S. secretary of health and human services said, "As you know, we're facing the end of the Western Civilization by having a market-based strategy. We are bringing Western Civilization to its knees by selling private insurance plans on a website where people can pick and choose."
People have long been able to buy insurance online and free to choose which insurance to buy and from whom or not to buy any at all. By forcing people to buy a product they don't want, Sebelius and the Obama administration are bringing Western civilization to its knees — at least our Constitution-based part of it.
ObamaCare limits our choices and freedom. A true market-based strategy would let people save money tax-free in medical savings accounts and use that money to choose their doctor and buy insurance tailored to their needs, with companies competing for their business across state lines. No mandates, no bureaucrats.
But then ObamaCare has never been about health care. It's been about power, as IRS target Dr. Ben Carson made clear Friday at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. The former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon called the Affordable Care Act the "worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."
He wasn't exaggerating.
ObamaCare puts the U.S. government in charge of fully one-sixth of America's economy, unconstitutionally seeks to force Americans to buy a service, often against their will, and places each individual's health at the eventual mercy of government bureaucracy.
ObamaCare's power to tax is the power to destroy our free-market economy — and our freedoms, as well.
So Sebelius is right after all. ObamaCare, as the song goes, is the end of the world as we know it.

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Pistol Caliber Carbines for a Home Defense Gun | Home Defense Gun

Pistol Caliber Carbines for a Home Defense Gun | Home Defense Gun

Pistol Caliber Carbines for a Home Defense Gun


pistol caliber carbine
When it comes to home defense, shotguns and handguns rule the roost, but there is a good argument that can be made for using a pistol caliber carbine in some instances.
Pistol caliber carbines often catch a lot of flak as they are underpowered when compared to a typical rifle caliber and heavy or bulky when compared to a handgun. With these two thoughts in mind, the question put forth is simply, “Why?”
In some instances it may be due to legality. Certain states and cities have strict laws regarding the purchase of handguns, much less the use of them in self-defense. Yet these same areas are typically less restrictive about possession or use of long guns.
Age can be a factor as handguns are only available for persons over the age of 21. This limitation on the 18-20 year-old age group can be overcome by the purchase of a long gun.
Another compelling reason to consider a pistol caliber carbine is that they are generally more accurate and quicker to get on target than a handgun. Red dot sights and flashlights can be easily added to most carbines without adding excessive weight and bulk as those same devices would add to a handgun.
The longer barrel of a carbine will add an increase in velocity because the bullet will be stabilized within the barrel for a longer distance. Yet this increase in velocity will not increase recoil due to the heavier weight of the carbine absorbing more of it than a handgun in a similar caliber. Carbines have a greater range than pistols and may be a consideration if the shooter has a house with large rooms or a large sized yard.
An added bonus is less muzzle blast or noise allowing for a faster follow up shot if needed. This is due to the longer barrel allowing all of the powder to burn before the bullet leaves the muzzle and the muzzle being farther from the shooter’s face than a handgun when it is fired.
A pistol caliber carbine can take many forms. Some of the most common are semiautomatic versions of military style submachine guns such as the Uzi, H&K MP5, Thompson 1921, M1 Carbine or the Sig Sauer MPX. Other designs such as the Kriss Vector or the Beretta Storm were solely designed for semiautomatic civilian use. These types of carbines are generally accurate have mild recoil and can accommodate the addition of a flashlight, laser or red dot sight. These carbines are available in standard calibers such as 9mm, 40 S&W, 357 SIG, 45 ACP and 30 Carbine in the case of the M1 Carbine. Unfortunately jurisdictions that restrict handguns may have similar restrictions or have a bad outlook on semiautomatic carbines as well.  In that case, there are other options.
Marlin_336W
Lever action rifles made by Winchester, Marlin, Rossi and Henry are modern day replicas of the rifles used in the Old West. It was common during the 19th century to have a rifle chambered for the same caliber as a pistol that was carried due to the limited availability of ammunition in most circumstances. These rifles can be had primarily in the typical revolver calibers of 38 Special, 357 Magnum, 44 Special, 44 Magnum, 38-40, 44-40 and 45 Colt. They are not semiautomatic and the traditional wood stocks and blue finish lend them the look of a more traditional-style hunting rifle.
The lever action carbines are not as easy to adapt as their semiautomatic cousins are with regard to lights and lasers, but some manufacturers are offering these types of carbines with a Picatinny scope base to mount a red dot sight. Aftermarket companies are making forends for some of them that will accept lights and lasers as well.
When it comes to a firearm for home defense, handguns and shotguns are not the only game in town.
Let us know in the comments what you think of pistol caliber carbines for home defense.

The Single-Payer Fantasy

The Single-Payer Fantasy

The Single-Payer Fantasy

Obamacare isn’t a Republican idea, and liberals could never get their dream of single-payer.


Signing the Affordable Care Act into law, March, 2010e1
 
As Obamacare declines toward a possible fall, the assembled denizens of the professional Left are scrambling in earnest to register their excuses with the public. Thus far at least, the award for the most creative contribution goes to former labor secretary Robert Reich, whose Saturday paean to single-payer health care managed to combine all of the most dishonest talking points that have bubbled up since October 1 while constructing in tandem a counterfactual so dazzling that only the truest of apostles could be persuaded by it.
Reich’s column has the Upworthy-worthy title, “The Democrats’ Version of Health Insurance Would Have Been Cheaper, Simpler, and More Popular (So Why Did We Enact the Republican Version and Why Are They So Upset?).” In it, Reich claims that if “Democrats [had] stuck to the original Democratic vision and built comprehensive health insurance on Social Security and Medicare, it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more widely accepted by the public.” And, he adds for good measure, “Republicans would be hollering anyway.”
The underlying conceit here, that the Democratic party had the option of “sticking to the original vision” of single-payer but that it instead settled on Obamacare as part of some sort of grand compromise, is fairly popular among the law’s apologists these days. Republicans, this story goes, are opportunistic hypocrites who dropped their longtime support for a system that looked just like Obamacare the very moment that a black man was elected to the White House. Democrats, meanwhile, are presented as being too nice and too solicitous of their opponents, and criticized for having elected to placate the Republican party by forgoing pursuit of what they truly wanted: Medicare for all.Reassuring as this tale might be to those who are worriedly surveying the damage that Healthcare.gov has wrought upon their project, it remains self-evidently absurd. Obamacare was passed into law without a single Republican vote; its passage led to the biggest midterm blowout since 1948; and repealing the measure has been, to borrow Harry Reid’s favorite word, the “obsession” of Republicans for nearly five years. It is a law based upon an idea that Republican leadership failed to consider, debate, or advance during any of the periods in which they have held political power — and one that they actively opposed when it was suggested in a similar form by President Clinton during the 1990s. If Republicans were desperate to get something done along the lines that Obama proposed in 2009, they have had a funny way of showing it over the past 159 years.
Champions of the Republican Idea Theory tend to respond to the presentation of these facts by charging that that the concept of an individual mandate was the product of a 1989 paper issued by the conservative Heritage Foundation (something its author vigorously denies), and that Republicans were so taken by the idea of forcing everybody to buy a private product that . . . well, actually herein lies the problem. Truth be told, Republicans were so taken with Heritage’s design that a grand number of two of them ever went so far as to introduce a federal bill based on it and Mitt Romney used it as the basis of reform in deep-blue Massachusetts. Oh, and Newt Gingrich once said something nice about it — in 1995. This, suffice it to say, is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Whatever historical weight the Left chooses to attribute to the Heritage proposal, it cannot change the salient fact that “Heritage” is synonymous with neither “Republican party” nor “conservative movement,” nor that, even if it were, such a link would serve only to confuse matters. As Avik Roy notes over at Forbes, the so-called “Heritage plan” was actually “killed” by another Heritage employee, Peter Ferrara, whose first act after leaving the organization was to campaign vehemently against the idea and to “[convince] 37 leaders of the conservative movement, including Phyllis Schlafly, Grover Norquist, and Paul Weyrich, to sign a petition opposing” it. Ferrara was joined in his opposition by the Cato Institute, the Galen Institute, and almost everybody on the Republican side of Congress.
Reich’s fantasy account of a restrained Democratic party does not hold up either. There is a devastatingly dull reason the bulletproof Democratic majority of 2008 didn’t build “comprehensive health insurance on Social Security and Medicare,” and that is that it didn’t have the votes. Indeed, with full control of the government, Democrats didn’t even have the votes to set up a public insurance option, let alone to take over the whole system. Long before Scott Brown was elected to the Senate, Ezra Klein was lamenting that the public option was dead on arrival. Joe Lieberman, Klein noted sadly, has “swung the axe and cut his deal cleanly, killing not only the public option, but anything that looked even remotely like it.”Lieberman did this for a solid reason: Despite the best efforts of the president, the mooted health-care bill remained deeply unpopular throughout the legislative process, and the public option even more so. Americans, remember, didn’t even want the bill as it currently ended up, and they were so determined to stop it that the progressive stronghold of Massachusetts elected to the Senate a Republican who ran promising not only to “kill” that specific bill but also to end the Democratic party’s filibuster-proof majority. Are we honestly expected to suppose that if the proposal had been farther to the left, it would have had a better chance? Does the progressive movement really think that the public can be persuaded that Democratic legislators “compromised” with an intransigent opposition out of the goodness of their hearts? I think not.
As for Reich’s claim that a single-payer system would have been “more widely accepted by the public”: Is he joking? So acutely aware were the president and his allies in Congress of the fact that the vast majority of Americans did not want to lose their current insurance that, like so many traveling salesmen on the frontier, they just brazenly lied, promising things of their product that it could never possibly deliver and assiduously playing down the scale of the chance that their customers were taking. Again, with Obamacare as it is now, the president was forced onto the defensive, provoked into repeating as mantra that “if you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan” and into reassuring voters that “no one will take it away — no matter what.” One can only imagine what he would have had to promise if he had been peddling single-payer.
The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who has dismissed the law as an “immense kludge” and is open about his preference for a Medicaid-for-all single-payer model, has managed to grasp that “the reluctance of workers who currently have good insurance through their employers to trade that insurance for something new” meant in practical terms that “the Affordable Care Act was probably all we could get.” It was indeed, and if the Republican party plays its cards right and can turn the disastrous rollout of the law into a setback not just to this particular scheme but to the technocratic model itself, it will be all that the Left “can get” for some time to come.
Nevertheless, as any good liar knows, it is the chaotic and amorphous opening days of any disaster that provide the opportunities for the most ambitious spin. Refusing to allow anything as prosaic as truth to intrude upon their fantasies, progressives are engaged in an audacious attempt to blame their opponents for their signature mistake and, worse, to pretend that the solution to the havoc wrought by magical thinking is to commission even more magic. “We must do what we can,” William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in a letter to Henry Kissinger, “to bring hammer blows against the bell jar that protects the dreamers from reality.” With Obamacare failing in precisely the ways that they predicted it would, conservatives have been given an extraordinary hammer. They must not let their opponents take it from their hands.