ObamaCare Exchanges:
One Big Headache
Excerpt: Purchasing health insurance can be a frustrating
experience for people trying to buy coverage on their own. Benefits,
cost-sharing requirements (including deductibles and copayments), access to
specific doctors and other health care providers, and premiums all vary, making
comparisons difficult. … Regardless of who runs the exchanges (the states or
the federal government), they will all have problems getting up and running.
Establishing an insurance exchange is "highly complex . . . unprecedented
and it's not going to be smooth," according to Kevin Counihan, chief
executive of Connecticut's health exchange who helped implement Massachusetts's
health reform. "This is a two- to three-year implementation we're doing in
10 months."
Why the Fiscal Multiplier Is Roughly Zero. By
Scott Sumner
Excerpt: Conservative critics of fiscal stimulus often point
out that the extra dollars must come from somewhere.3 If the government borrows
funds to boost spending, then interest rates might rise, which would crowd out
private investment expenditures on consumer durables, new homes, and business
ventures. Although crowding out can reduce the effectiveness of fiscal
stimulus, Keynesians correctly note that when interest rates are zero, it is
unlikely that additional government borrowing will be fully offset by declining
private investment, especially if the central bank holds rates close to zero.4
'Cyprus II' in Italy - it begins: Monte Paschi
"bails in" bondholders, halts $650m in coupon payments
Excerpt: Today, as many expected on the day following the
German elections, the dominos are finally starting to wobble, and as we
predicted, Monte Paschi, Italy's oldest and according to many, most insolvent
bank, quietly commenced a bondholder "bail in" after it said that it
suspended interest payments on three hybrid notes following demands by European
authorities that bondholders contribute to the restructuring of the bailed out
Italian lender. (The term bail-in simply means 'reverse bank robbery.' Remember
when the bank robbers burst in from the OUTSIDE, stole the money and
left chased by cop cars with sirens wailing? In the New Normal, the richest
men in the world simply steal from bondholders, depositors and anyone else with
deep pockets stupid enough to invest or deposit in the criminal institution
known as a Too Big to Fail (TBTF) bank. These banks routinely engage in high
risk--or more to the point, reckless--practices like lending to people without
jobs or speculating in derivatives, and then when inevitably,
the SHTF, they get the green-light from governments and Too High to Be Held
Accountable (THTBHA) agencies like the IMF, the EU Commission, etc, and simply
raid the deposits and/or holdings of their Too Dumb to Come in Out of the Rain
(TDTCIOOTR) depositors and bondholders. It's the New Normal. Bondholder beware! --Don Hank)
Good Article: The Unions’ Own ‘1%’: The Laborers and
other unions pay big, while feds look the other way. By Luke Rosiak
Excerpt: Union leaders are increasingly distant from the
everyday workers they claim to represent, with faster-growing pay and an
entrenched ruling class, data show. Nepotism is in full force, union members
complain, and the closest some second- or third-generation officials have been
to a day on a job site is a class on labor relations at Harvard. With a small
handful of persons controlling a multitude of related trusts, sometimes for
decades, it should be no surprise the Department of Labor has found at least 89
cases where union members had funds embezzled by their own officials in the
first half of 2013. (Show me your shocked face. ~Bob)
Syrian Army soldiers
rescue 16-year-old girl who was pimped out by her FSA father to the rebels
Excerpt: It’s called ‘Sex Jihad.’
Women prostitute themselves to FSA rebels as a way to help the war effort. In
this case, the teen girl’s father allowed fellow FSA rebels to rape her on
multiple occasions, and her mother warned her to shut up and not tell anyone
about it.
Excerpt: The too big to fail banks are now much, much larger
than they were the last time they caused so much trouble. The six largest banks
in the United States
have gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years. Meanwhile, 1,400
smaller banks have disappeared from the banking industry during that time.
Kenyan president says
siege of Nairobi mall is over, declares mourning period for the dead
Excerpt: Kenyan President Uhuru
Kenyatta on Tuesday night declared that the four-day-long siege of an upscale mall in the capital by
Islamist militants has ended with the deaths of five militants and 11 in
custody. He announced three days of mourning for the more than 60 people killed
in the attack, a death toll that is expected to rise with the recovery of more
bodies from the mall, he said.
British hero of the
mall massacre: Ex Royal Marine with a handgun saved 100 lives as terrorists ran
amok
Excerpt: A former marine emerged as a hero of the Nairobi siege yesterday
after he was credited with saving up to 100 lives. … With a gun tucked into his
waistband, he was pictured helping two women from the complex. … ‘He went back
in 12 times and saved 100 people. Imagine going back in when you knew what was
going on inside.’
Off-Duty British
Soldier w/Gun Saves 100 in Kenya.
By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: If only he had an AR-15. Then Piers Morgan’s head would
explode. "An off-duty member of the SAS emerged as a hero
of the Nairobi
siege yesterday, after he was credited with saving up to 100 lives."
Our Truest Lies: If the truth doesn’t serve
social justice — well, tell a noble lie. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: Then the assault weapon vanished into fantasy.
Instead, over the course of the week, it was slowly learned that the unhinged
Alexis had somehow passed at least two background checks, legally bought a
shotgun, modified it, and for 30 minutes shot and reloaded it to slaughter the
innocent. Are we to outlaw the owning of shotguns despite background checks and
lawful purchases?
Reid: Defunding
Obamacare ‘dead on arrival’ in Senate
http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/23/reid-defunding-obamacare-dead-on-arrival-in-senate/
http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/23/reid-defunding-obamacare-dead-on-arrival-in-senate/
Excerpt: “We’re not going to bow to tea party anarchists who
deny that Obamacare is the law,” he added. (say, Harry, aren’t the immigration
laws the law of the land? How about enforcing those? ~Bob.)
Good Column: High Risk, Low
Yield. By Thomas Sowell
Excerpt: This has been the worst time, politically, for
President Barack Obama since he took office. Recent polls reveal that public
confidence in both his domestic and foreign policies has been falling, amid
revelations about their defects and dangers. Even people who once supported and
defended him have now turned against him.
Excerpt: Last week I was reading a U.S. Census Bureau report
called the American Community Survey. Alas, the report contained nothing but
bad news about the state of our nation's economy as well as some nasty spikes
in the number of folks living below the poverty level. Every time I read of
these misery indexes I can't help but look back on Obama's 2009 pork stimulus
program. How in the world did we spend nearly a trillion dollars only to make
matters worse than they were. More homeless people trying to survive in tent
cities, homeless shelters, living under freeway bridges or even out of their
cars.
Pelosi On Spending
Cuts: "The Cupboard is Bare; There's No More Cuts to Make"
Excerpt: How can someone who works in D.C. as a
representative say with a straight face that there just aren’t any more areas
in the federal government that can be cut? As if they’ve already cut so much
spending during the dreaded “sequestration,” right? The same government
spending cuts that somehow still resulted in spending increases. In
D.C.-speak, a cut in a proposed increase constitutes a spending cut. This is
how Obama can say with a straight face that he’s “slashed” the deficit by half
in just over four years.
Obamacare: One blow after another. By Jennifer Haberkorn and Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico
Excerpt: The Obamacare that consumers will finally be able
to sign up for next week is a long way from the health plan President Barack
Obama first pitched to the nation.
Millions of low-income Americans won’t receive coverage.
Many workers at small businesses won’t get a choice of insurance plans right
away. Large employers won’t need to provide insurance for another year. Far
more states than expected won’t run their own insurance marketplaces. And a
growing number of workers won’t get to keep their employer-provided coverage.
The foreign policy
that was. By Paul Greenberg
Excerpt: How sum up the shambles -- as far as the eye can
see -- that remain of American foreign policy after the past few weeks of zigs
and zags, of appeals to high principle followed abruptly, even in the same
presidential speech, by a headlong abandonment of it? How reconcile this
president's demands for action and then equal but opposite embrace of inaction?
CAIR Impeded FBI
Probe of Somali Terrorist Group in Kenya Attack
Excerpt: The Al Qaeda affiliate that terrorized a Kenyan
shopping center and murdered scores of innocent people has a powerful and
influential advocate in the United
States, the Muslim “civil rights” group
known as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). It’s unlikely that
the mainstream media will mention the connection, but it’s deep and it involves
interfering in federal probes involving the radicalization of young Somali men
in the U.S., like the ones
carrying out the attack at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Northern
Nairobi. CAIR has also wielded its power to silence critics of the
Al Qaeda offshoot—Somalia’s
Al Shabaab—that stormed into the mall, murdered at least 68 and took dozens of
hostages. (Fighting terrorism is Islamophobic because, you know, it’s their
culture. ~Bob.)
Has British 'White
Widow' been killed in final assault on Kenyan shopping mall? Body of white
woman terrorist is found at scene
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2429784/Kenya-mall-attack-Has-Samantha-Lewthwaite-British-White-Widow-killed-Nairobi-siege.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2429784/Kenya-mall-attack-Has-Samantha-Lewthwaite-British-White-Widow-killed-Nairobi-siege.html
Excerpt: As attempts to flush the remaining militants out of
a Kenyan shopping centre continued, officials said three Islamist extremists
had died during attempts to free their hostages.
Insiders said one was a white woman – adding weight to the
theory that Lewthwaite, the fugitive widow of 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay, was
behind the attack that has left 62 dead and 170 injured.
GOP rep. presses ICE
on re-naming of defunded advocacy position
http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/23/gop-rep-presses-ice-on-re-naming-of-defunded-advocacy-position/#ixzz2fmLRFTIF
http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/23/gop-rep-presses-ice-on-re-naming-of-defunded-advocacy-position/#ixzz2fmLRFTIF
Excerpt: A Republican member of Congress is
investigating whether the Obama administration circumvented the law by
simply re-naming a position Congress specifically defunded. Tennessee
Republican Rep. Diane Black is trying to ascertain whether Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) “ignored” the law when the nation’s immigration law
enforcement body renamed ICE’s “public advocate” instead of eliminating the
position after Congress defunded it.
IRS scandal figure
Lois Lerner retires
Excerpt: Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois
Lerner is finally retiring from the scandal-plagued agency. Lerner tried to plead
the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination in congressional testimony, but the House![]()
Oversight Committee ruled that she
waived her Fifth Amendment rights when she said “I have not broken any laws”
before attempting her plea….Emails released this month by the House Ways and
Means Committee show Lerner appearing to collude with Democratic operatives and
the Federal Elections Commission in 2011. (After four months paid vacation, Lois Lerner is harshly
punished with full retirement benefits. – LLW. Guess she has a “Get out
of jail free card”? –Barb. It’s more an if-I-go-to-jail-I-talk card. ~Bob.)
Tweet from Jimmy B @jburke_nc
Why are people fed up with Washington? Louis Lerner.. Breaks the law,
takes the 5th, gets a paid summer vacation & now retires on our dime !
The Military Betrays Women. Even if there
were a “war on women,” the answer would not be to send unwilling women to
war. By Elaine Donnelly
Excerpt: According to the New
York Times, Hagel got an earful. Staff sergeants worried that if women were
assigned to combat, the high standards of the Marine Corps would have to be
lowered, “family lives would suffer,” and rates of sexual assault and
harassment would increase. When Secretary Hagel asked whether it was right to
deny the opportunity to a woman who wants to join, a fearless captain replied,
“I haven’t met a female Marine who is standing up and shouting, ‘I want to be
infantry.’” This must have been a shock, since the 15 Marines speaking to Hagel
were not men; they were women.
American History: Do
you know US History?
Excerpt: And the results were even worse in a study by the
U.S. Mint, which found that only 7% percent of Americans could name the first
four U.S.
Presidents in order: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison.
Bye-Bye Muslim
Brotherhood; Egypt
Bans Organization. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: This was one of several
lawsuits making its way through the Egyptian legal system. But it has led to some definitive
results.
The Central Planning
Solution to Evil. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: We are a society sheltered from violence. No one in
Rwanda
spends time wondering what kind of man would murder people. They probably live
next door to him.
The white guilt of
Bono is keeping Africa down. By Mic Wright
Excerpt: The U2 singer is like an Easter Island head of
patrician arrogance, the "fixer" of Africa
whose relationship to his native land’s struggles is very vague. While he has
wrung his hands so much over foreign aid it’s a surprise they still function,
he has left Ireland
to it. To many it seems as if Ireland
is just too small, too petty a problem for the great Bono Vox to turn his gaze
upon it.
Stray dogs terrorize Detroit neighborhoods,
survey attempts to number them. By Corey Williams
Excerpt: The more than 30,000 vacant houses and buildings
that once were homes for Detroit
residents now provide havens and shelter for the animals. McPhee said he plans
to share the numbers to find a way to humanely deal with what has become a
safety risk as the strays breed, increasing their population even as the city's
population falls. "With so many houses open that way, there's also a lot
of rats," McPhee said. "That's when we start to have health problems
as the rats and the dogs meet."
Pickering asked if Benghazi a Botched Kidnapping Plot. By Ben
Barrack
Excerpt: Her name is Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
and she sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee. She may
have asked two of the most important questions at the September 19th hearing on
Benghazi but
they don’t appear to have been picked up.
Global warming
'hiatus' puts climate change scientists on the spot. Los Angeles Times
Excerpt: It's contentious," said IPCC panelist
Shang-Ping Xie, a professor of climate science at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography at UC San Diego. "The stakes have been raised by various
people, especially the skeptics." Though scientists don't have any firm
answers, they do have multiple theories.
CAIR's Irony Deficit
Excerpt: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is
using a complex web of non-profit and corporate entities to keep millions of
dollars in donations from foreign government s and other international donors
from public disclosure, Washington's Daily
Caller reports.
The Gang Religion of
Islam. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: Killing non-Muslims is the point of Islam. To the
extent that it has any point. That isn't to say that Islam doesn't preach the
virtues of charity and love for one's fellow Muslim. It does. But its virtues
are not original. Like most of the rest of the framework of it, they are lifted
from existing religions.
Time for Muslims to
confront Muslim evil. By Dennis Prager
Excerpt: And I say this recognizing that Italy’s
Catholic clergy saved many Jews [during World War II], and that [Pope] Pius, to
his credit, had to be aware of this. What he could have and should have done
was to announce that any Catholic — and for that matter any Christian — who in any way helps in the murder of
innocent Jews is committing a mortal sin and will not attain salvation. In
other words, he or she will go to Hell.
GRAPH: Record number
of Americans believe government has too much power. By Joy Wilke
Excerpt: Six in 10 Americans (60%) believe the federal
government has too much power, one percentage point above the previous high
recorded in September 2010. At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the
government has too much power. Thirty-two percent now say the government has
the right amount of power.
No, Harry Reid – I’m
NOT an Anarchist
http://genfringe.com/2013/09/harry-reid-im-anarchist/
http://genfringe.com/2013/09/harry-reid-im-anarchist/
Excerpt: This past Friday, the House passed a bill that
would fund the government up through December 15th and that would
defund Obamacare. But ah, the opposition. Senate majority leader, Harry
Reid called the bill “dead on arrival
The Ugly, Unknown Story Behind Roe v. Wade. By Scottie
Hughes
Excerpt: Second, abortion advocates at the time of Roe were
caught up in the wake of two decades of fear about a growing world population.
A widely popular 1968 book by Dr. Paul Ehrlich declared that “the battle to
feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines –
hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” The Journal
of the American Medical Association published an article warning “if we
breed like rabbits, in the long run we have to live and die like rabbits.”
Good Column: Morning Bits.
By Jennifer Rubin
Excerpt: While the
Senate food fight goes on, “One week away, Obamacare’s small business insurance
exchanges not all ready for launch.”
Excerpt: Look, Democrats. You fouled up on Obamacare. You
fouled up big time, and time is running out to mitigate the damage. You said
you had to pass the bill in order to see what’s in it. Apparently it was like
the Ark of the Covenant. Yes, this is a train wreck. It’s a train wreck upon
another train wreck, upon another train wreck… it’s train wrecks all the way
down.
Illegal alien charged
with raping 14-year-old girl in Utah
Just looking for a better life, doing jobs Americans won’t
do. ~Bob
Pro-Hillary superPAC
aimed at recruiting college students accused of swindling money from others
Excerpt: A pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC focused on getting
college students to sign up and vote for the former Secretary of State may
instead be doing quite the opposite – swindling money out of the unsuspecting.
Illegal Immigration
on the Rise. By Walter Russell Mead
Excerpt: For the second year in a row, more illegal
immigrants were caught entering the country than the year before, mostly along
the US-Mexico border. The numbers are nowhere near their pre-recession peak,
but they are unmistakably trending upward. This has heightened the battle
between Republicans and Democrats over whether immigration reform should focus
first on fixing the border or on clarifying the status of illegal immigrants
already in the country.
What Does Merkel’s
Victory Mean?. By Walter Russell Mead
Excerpt: But Joe’s bigger point, about Germany’s
current preference for regulated stability over the disruptive forces of
markets, is the important take-away.
Marylanders Buying
1,000 Guns A Day Before New Gun Laws Take Effect
Excerpt: In anticipation of the
implementation of new gun control laws next week, Marylanders have been
scooping up 1,000 guns a day. According to the Baltimore Sun, 1,000 guns a day
have been sold every day for the last two weeks and this week promises to be
more of the same.
Obamacare Horror: Father Gets Notified of TRIPLING Insurance Premium,
Provider Directly Blames ‘Affordable Healthcare Act’
Cory Booker's ethical
lapse: Editorial
Excerpt: Mayor Cory Booker stumbled when he accepted nearly
$700,000 in payments from his former law firm while mayor, even as the firm won
$2 million in work from Newark’s
housing authority and watershed. It is made worse by his refusal to release
documents spelling out the terms of those payments.
CAIR: Who Cares If
Americans Were Involved in Kenya
Terror Attack?
Excerpt: One of the most prominent and controversial
Muslim-American advocacy groups says “who cares” if American jihadists were
involved in the murderous terror attack on a shopping mall in Kenya. (As HC
said, what difference does it make? ~Bob.)
Quote from Mark Steyn
Excerpt: "In the Middle East nothing quite paints you
as a moderate more than going around with missiles that say 'Death to America.'
That's a message we can all unite around when Iranian President Rouhani, Mr.
Moderate, is in New York
for dictator's week."
New Front in Blue
Civil War: Silicon Valley. By Walter Russell
Mead
Excerpt: If blue policies worked in practice the way their
defenders say they do in theory, then San Jose,
the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley, one of America’s most dynamic and regions, should be
the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. It should be a place
where the overwhelming “excess” of riches from a relatively large, elite class
of millionaires is channeled by public officials into brilliantly designed
welfare, education, and infrastructure programs, making it the envy of the
civilized world. Instead, San Jose
is going broke.
Six-year-old rape
victim ordered to wed rapist's 8-year-old son
Merkel the Great. By
Roger Cohen
Excerpt: With each postwar German generation another debate
was engaged: The silence of the Adenauer years gave way to angry demands for an
accounting from the 1960s generation; and then there was Willy Brandt on his
knees in the Warsaw ghetto; and the back-and-forth over détente; and the
polemics over the stationing of Pershing-2 missiles; and the miracle of
unification; and the immense cost of that long process; and finally the pained
self-questioning as to whether, after Auschwitz, Germany could ever be “normal”
and Germans “proud” — questions that found an answer in the flag-wrapped
euphoria of the 2006 World Cup.
Robert A. Hallwww.tartanmarine.blogspot.com
Books by Robert A. Hall: http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-book-published.html
"I
have only two men out of my company and 20 out of some other company.
We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we
are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no
one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." --1st. Lt.
Clifton B. Cates, Navy Cross, 2 Distinguished Service Crosses, (later
Commandant), USMC, July 19, 1918 commanding 96 Company, 6th Marines,
near the French town of Soissons.
"Casualties: many, Percentage of dead: not known, Combat efficiency: we are winning." --Colonel David M. Shoup, USMC, MOH, (later Commandant) Tarawa, 21 November 1943.
Freedom is not free, but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share. --Captain J.E. "Ned" Dolan, USMC (Ret.) Platoon Leader E/2/7, Korean War
"Casualties: many, Percentage of dead: not known, Combat efficiency: we are winning." --Colonel David M. Shoup, USMC, MOH, (later Commandant) Tarawa, 21 November 1943.
Freedom is not free, but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share. --Captain J.E. "Ned" Dolan, USMC (Ret.) Platoon Leader E/2/7, Korean War
We
fight not for glory, nor for riches, nor for honour, but only and alone
for Freedom, which no good man lays down but with his life.
--Declaration of Arbroath, Scotland, 1320
In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free. —Edward Gibbon
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)
In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free. —Edward Gibbon
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)
"I have been made victorious through terror" (Bukhari 4.52.220) --Mohammad.
No comments:
Post a Comment