All the News That's Fit to be Tied

I have an axe to grind, but unlike the New York Times, I freely admit it.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Is the President Walking on Broken Glass?

Just how bad is the situation with ObamaCare? Has it driven the President to the edge? As the truth emerges and we discover that He and the Democrats understood the healthcare market would be utterly unraveled to accomplish the long-sought liberal goal of national healthcare. We learned that while he and other Democrats assured us if we liked our policy we could keep it was a lie.  If we liked our doctors we could keep them, period, was a lie too. Worse yet, they knew it was a lie and told it anyway. It was as bold a lie as you could tell. As brazen as a lie could be. Even as he said it he knew it was untrue and he thought he could get away with it. Like a kid in a candy store, the President thought he could pocket that one piece and walk out without getting caught. But as the lies piled on and the truth became a victim of the knockout the President has been caught and is now walking on the broken glass of a shattered healthcare scheme? How will the bloodbath end?

Monday, November 18, 2013

ObamaCare: The Road to Single-Payer

Those that think the Republicans have never offered an alternative to ObamaCare are wrong. The simple truth is Democrats don't want reform. What they want is "Single-Payer." They want government run healthcare to control people's lifestyles and medical choices. They want to eliminate insurance companies from the equation and impose a healthcare tax on every working person and subsidize the cost for those they deem "can't afford it." What is occurring now is the intermediate step toward single payer; make policy management so impossible that it becomes a losing proposition for insurance companies, hospitals and doctors and they get out of the business. Both are happening right now.If you think this is a paranoid view consider the following: Before ObamaCare was passed 85% of people with healthcare insurance were satisfied with the policies. It wasn't perfect, but 85% is not bad. There were said to be 40 million people uninsured. Some who did not want insurance and some who did not have it because they were too poor or ineligible. Rather than legislate reforms to provide wider coverage and lower prices, which could have been easily done, the Democrats decided to go after the whole enchilada. To accomplish this they have to destroy the current system. The Democrats have told what they think you deserve: MedicAid, also known as healthcare for the poor, except for the ruling class of course. Be careful what you wish for.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Have we become a nation of men?

That is the question I pose on this July 4th, 2013. Have we surrendered our loyalty to the Constitution to become a nation of men who pick and choose which laws we will defend and which we will ignore? Or do we remain a nation of laws where the laws are larger than any man, whether he be rich man, poor man, beggar man thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. If we were to judge the activities of our government of late you might have to conclude we have become a nation of men. Whether it's the Executive Branch's failure to obey and defend the Constitution and the laws that govern the various departments in the bureaucracy. Or, the Legislative Branch's failure to follow its own procedures to produce a budget and keep the bureaucracy in check. Or, the Judicial Branch's penchant to rule in a vacuum as if men, women and the nation were not affected by the decisions they make. I have always been an optimist about our nation, but I must admit that on this Independence Day, pessimism is getting the better of me.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Obama Pal Mark Zuckerberg a Conservative?

I have never yet seen true conservative individuals or groups pretend to be liberal and try get their political opponents to vote them by trickery, but over the past decade I have seen liberal individuals and groups do it many times. For example a few years ago in New Jersey some liberals’ candidates offered themselves to the electorate as "Tea Party" candidates to dilute the conservative electorate and engineer Democrat wins. The new "Americans for a Conservative Direction" immigration group is a new twist on an old strategy; It is just a blatant spit in your eye advertising campaign by Obama and the Democrats, fronted by FaceBook CEO and Obama pal Mark Zuckerberg to portray supporters of Amnesty as in favor of conservative positions on immigration. I went to the site to have a look for myself: www.americansforaconservativedirection.com. It looks okay. Has a few well thought out paragraphs that repeat the common goals; pay a fine, learn English, join the back of the line, etc. It includes a background check, no benefits, E-verify, all the buzz phrases to make conservative swoon. The only problem is many of these things will not be in the final bill or the immigration situation would be worse. Leaving illegal aliens to care for themselves for 13 years without assistance would leave our cities in chaos. Taking note that only half of the three million illegal residents eligible for amnesty in 1986 joined the program, what do we do with those who do not sign up this time? If we do not deport them you could say that is "de facto amnesty." This ad in now running on television and the conservative talk radio circuit, but it is an ad developed by and for liberal supporters of the Democrat Immigration Reform bill now in the Senate, but pretending to be a conservative voice. I am not the first to discover this, but I can't resist pointing it out. 

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Is Snowden a Snow Job?

It has occurred to me that the NSA leak story is just too convenient to be anything but a planned diversion to take the IRS, EPA, and other Obama data abuse scandals off the front page and replace them with the biggest data mining story of them all. By smushing all the data into one big story, you can confuse the difference between what is legal behavior and what is not. You can confuse which data is legal to collect and use and which data is not. You can confuse what data is usable and what data is not. Always remember the old KISS principle: Keep it Simple Stupid. Data mining of the type done by the NSA is legal, though it may be questionable. Data dumping and targeting of political enemies as done by the IRS and the EPA is illegal. Of that there is no question. So why then is the media suddenly focused on what will blow over, and ignoring that which can be fatal to Obama? Ask yourself that question. In the meantime, Keep it Simple Stupid and bring a snow shovel.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

It's not the Surveillence, it's the Misuse of Information

Wasn't it Seinfeld's mailman nemesis Newman who said "When you control information, you control the world?" Well that is the problem President Obama now faces. While there are some arguments against data mining on such as scale it cannot be argued that we must have some weapon against enemies of the nation. Surveillance of the kind now being reported, which is truly amazing in scope, is a way to accomplish that goal. Obama's problem is that he and those that support him have demonstrated they are willing to collect and use illegally obtained data to defeat their political enemies. The IRS scandal clearly shows the extra-prosecution and extended investigation of conservative non-profits during the 2010-2012 period. It is now apparent that Mitt Romney's tax info was obtained illegally by Senator Harry Reed during the election cycle. Is is clear that the IRS audits of conservatives, such as the Koch brothers, was politically motivated. It is also clear that some IRS employees made the confidential tax data of some individuals available to liberal-leaning publications and think thanks. One of the conservative groups awaiting a long three-year struggle for a 6-month 501c process was not only harassed by the IRS, but visited by several federal departments as well. For most Americans this is cheating and while many have gotten used to it, most of us resent it and rightfully so. The only real consolation is that  the scope of the data being collected is so vast, it's unlikely it will be useful except in the rare circumstance, but that doesn't make cheating okay.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Governor Christie Regains Poise

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie played smart yesterday and named NJ Attorney General Jeffery Chiesa to serve in the U.S. Senate, a seat desperately needed by Republicans in the upcoming budget and policy debates. It can make a significant difference in the result. To my detractors, who are myriad; it is always partisan Democrats and squishy Republicans that call for bi-partisanship. Democrats always want Republicans to be bipartisan but rarely offer the same unless forced. My squishy Republican friends will have to speak for themselves. In my view Politics is catering to interest groups, with a eye on The Constitution and balancing the three branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial.  The Democratic groups are those that place groups, social justice and anti-growth policies at the forefront and are based on the concept that all people should be equally poor and bereft except those that makes the rules. The Republican groups are those that believe we should all become as legally wealthy as we can and not do anything to kill the Golden Goose called the economy. Pick a side.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

It's the easy ones that kill ya!

Well today is another one of those days. I get to test my prognostication skills against the Governor of New Jersey. Governor Christie: Your are done as the Republican nominee in 2016 because it's the easy ones that kill ya. All you had to do was appoint a Republican replacement to help your party in the U.S. Senate and you would have found a well of support out there, but instead you will now find the electoral rest stop. Sure you might win a few primaries, but your failure to support your party will hurt you more. If you were a Democrat you would have appointed Booker. Booker has learned the cost of disloyalty and will never vote against the Democrats in the Senate. As a Republican you have hurt your electorate, hurt your party and failed to do the right thing, the easy thing, the smart thing. Let's see how that effects your race in 2016.

Friday, May 17, 2013

America Drinks and Goes Home

As we enter this gorgeous summer weekend Washington is on fire and the President is out of town. Not much has changed with the Obama Traveling Medicine Show as we enter the second term of the Hawaiian Huckster. The Obama  numbing elixir is having its desired effect; The President uses the government as a tool to control, intimidate and eliminate opposition and America drinks and goes home. His mostly willing accomplices, the Democrats and the media, follow him blithely, tongues hanging, tails wagging, complying with his demand for obedience and heeling as told. There is a small, but hopeful sign that the flow of the elixir will stop, but it is very small and only slightly hopeful. Many people think the current supply of Obama Elixir will be renewed and the numbing effect will return. Are they right? It's up to you.

Friday, May 10, 2013

It's Not Just the IRS

Last February I wrote a column called Barack Obama: Government's Point Shaver. The "point shaver" reference was to a decades old college basketball corruption scheme and the theme of the column was out of control government. That theme resurfaced when the IRS apologized for scrutinizing 501c4 applications with names that included Tea Party and Patriot. A charge that was denied in Congressional testimony, but turned out to be true. As I noted in my February column we now have the various departments of the federal bureaucracy being run by political appointees and doctrinaire career public employees that support an agenda that is hurting the country. I invite you to read my February meme, which  can be accessed by clicking on February to the right of this column. America is being slowly crushed by a federal bureaucracy that the President should be protecting us from. He is either too preoccupied to be bothered or he is leading the charge. We can only hope the latter is not true, although many people believe it is; How about you?

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Immigration Tsarnaev Style


The Tsarnaev’s are the prefect vehicle for Americans to judge the Immigration Bill under consideration by the U.S. Congress and supported by the Gang of Eight. The Tsarnaev’s came to America seeking political asylum. Immigrants normally get asylum when their lives are in danger in their home country or seek safety from persecution or prosecution. The youngest Dzhokhar (pronounced Zocar) Tsarnaev became a citizen in 2012. So the interaction with the family includes several federal and state agencies including Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), State Department, Department of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on the federal level. At the state level they interacted with Housing, Welfare and the Department of Transitional Assistance. So let’s see: They received welfare from Massachusetts, Food Stamps from the Dept of Agriculture, Legal Permanent Residence (LPR) status from INS and clearance to travel to a country from which they sought political asylum from the State Dept. INS failed to note the Tsarnaev’s were traveling to a country they sought asylum from. HUD, Agriculture and the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance failed to notice they were immigrants and not technically eligible for Food Stamps, Section 8 Housing or welfare. This doesn't include the failure of the FBI, who was warned about the older brother who is now dead. Basically all the departments that failed with the Tsarnaevs are going to be trusted to track the activities of 11 Million new immigrants that will be on the “path to citizenship” if the bill passes. Call or email your Senator and Representative or reap the whirlwind.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

A Reply to Byron York and the Gang of Eight


After reading Byron York’s Washington Examiner article on the Immigration bill (A look deep inside the Gang of Eight Bill) I have a question for our elite group of Senators who so slavishly seek to enamor the Latino vote for the 2014 election and beyond. I would only add that such pandering is unlikely to provide the result they seek. First and foremost the bill requires that illegal aliens already in the country sign up to take part in the program. Question: What is the incentive for that? Immigrants who do sign up for the program will be finger-printed, background checked, pay a fine and required to learn English. If they are collecting benefits of any kind it will end and they will have been discovered to have further violated the law by taking benefits. Considering Congress has basically conceded they will not be deported, they are in no danger, so why bother? Once an illegal immigrant has joined the program and met all the requirements to become a Restricted Provisional Immigrant (RPI) what is the incentive to continue? It could take 13 to 22 years for an immigrant to become a citizen under the program. During this time INS will issue Green (Legal Permanent Resident) Cards , to no more than 2M a year. So in essence, while these 11,000 million RPI’s are waiting for Green Cards they will be working illegally as they were before the program existed. It takes much less time through legal channels to get a Green Card and citizenship so what is the incentive for it? This bill is a no-win for illegal immigrants. They are better served by the status quo. Their situation will be worse if they sign up then if they try to become legal citizens in a variety of other ways. Everything beyond these issues in the bill is even more complex and therefore even less likely to succeed. Complete reform of the INS and a more sophisticated and streamlined method of Immigration and Naturalization is what is needed. The Gang of Eight Bill is just a Band-Aid for a broken system that cheats the taxpayers that fund it and the immigrants forced to use it.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

The Sunday Sermon That Wasn't


The Reverend Leon’s Easter Sunday homily took many by surprise. No such fiery rhetoric was heard at Obama’s inauguration or for that matter at the inauguration of George W. Bush either, which Leon also spoke at.  It was a surprise to all, the media, the attendees and yes, even the President himself. However, Obama probably liked it. It fits in with his Zeitgeist of America.  His anti-colonial, built-on-slavery perspective that makes high taxation, oppressive regulation and the squandering of the nation’s assets a perfect solution for the past sins of the oppressors; although they will never pay enough from Obama’s point of view. If we are lucky there will be something left when he’s gone and we can clean up the mess.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Barack Obama; Government's Point Shaver

As we enter the second Obama term we are faced with a government totally out of control. We have many departments operating in total free-lance mode with overriding goals and objectives their Obama appointed directors want to accomplish. For example we have a SEC at war with Wall Street. We have an HHS at war with insurance companies and the medical profession. We have an EPA at war with the producers of 95-percent of our energy. We have an INS at war with law enforcement. We have a DOD at war with the military. We have an INS recreating a tax system that is shifting from voluntary to compulsory compliance. We have a Treasury Department as war with the Banking system. We have a Justice Department that picks and chooses what laws it will enforce. And we have a President whose failure to demonstrate leadership in any of these areas has made impotent America's one defense against an out of control government: The President of the United States. Yes, that's right. He is our guy. The guy we select to control government so it does not run us over. Instead of electing someone to protect us from an overreaching government, we have selected a government insider who talks the outside game and plays the inside one. He is the government's inside man. He is the point shaver. He pretends he is helping you, but he is really helping them. Who are they? They are the unelected bureaucrats in Washington who devour your tax money and will never have enough until they reduce your income to an allowance. We suffer from a lack of leadership and President Obama is at fault. Wake up fool before you are broke and penniless.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Real Immigration Reform

This a repost of a column on Immigration from Feb of 2012. The issue is the same and so is the fix.

The Republicans need a more sophisticated way to handle the immigration issue. It seems like the even the dumbest news anchor, pundit or questioner can trip them up into some ridiculous argument or statement that can be used to grind them up into little pieces and render them unelectable. The New Narrative would like to contribute to this effort. It would begin by pointing out that there isn't an immigration strategy than can work unless the current system is reformed. It takes more than 10 years to complete the citizenship process and the backlog is so long that if the current illegal population returned home they would not be processed for at least a decade; probably one of the main reasons many won't return home and prefer to live in the shadows. So we should begin by reforming the Immigration and Naturalization Service into a tight, streamlined organization that can reduce the processing time and clear up the current backlog. Secondly we should control all of the entry points so illegal aliens cannot enter the country without documentation. And third: We should reform the visa and political asylum process so that it can keep track of those here on visas and not be used for trivial immigration cases. Republicans must not let themselves be drawn into arguments about specific nationalities, but focus instead on the INS as a service that is failing the nation. The racial and ethnic hustlers are constantly looking for ways to use the immigration debate to defeat any remedy except open borders. The Republicans must handle the argument better if they want to win.


Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Dems Go From Straw Man to Circular Logic


For the past four years the Democrats have used the classic "straw man" argument to avoid creating a budget to control federal spending. Under the guise of the "continuing resolution" they have managed to obliterate all budget control and increase spending by more than trillion dollars a year since Obama came to office. Simply by saying the Republican budget with make old people eat dog food, put sick children in the street, make children with autism fend for themselves, the "straw man" has served the Democrats very well. However, after four years the straw man is getting old so now a new plan has been put in place. Unlike Republicans who see the budget as a way to control spending, the Democrats, Chuck Schumer in particular, see the budget as a way to increase taxes. So this year we can expect the Democrats to try and get another tax increase or else use "circular logic" to defeat any Republican effort to further try and control spending. Democrats will simply say we must have a budget with tax reform so they can increase taxes. If they cannot get a tax increase they will say: For four years the Republicans complained we wouldn't pass a budget in the Senate and now that we have they won’t pass it. That's why we haven't offered one for the past four years. (The circular argument in pristine form.) Once again the Democrats will try to place the blame on the Republicans using the lap dog media as their willing accomplice. The big questions are will the media be compliant and will the people fall for the same old game in a new form?

Monday, January 14, 2013

Gunning Down Poor Langauge


It is always amazing to watch Republicans talk themselves into unenviable corners.  Take for example the latest fury about gun control. A republican House member has been reported to say no “assault” weapons ban will get through the House. He failed to say that any ban that includes semi-automatic weapons will include hundreds of non-military, non-assault rifles and shotguns. He also failed to say that a 10-round limit on the size of magazines, does not affect some semi-automatic handguns that hold 14 to 16 rounds. So in reality it’s not just a ban on all semi-automatic weapons or on all clips to 10 rounds. It just ain’t that easy.  Senator Diane Feinstein's (D-Calif) bill includes more than 900 exceptions to the semi-automatic rule and grandfathers (permits) such weapons that are already in the possession of gun owners.  So simply put Republicans have permitted the press and the Democrats to put them in the unenviable position of defending “assault” weapons as if they were the only weapons under discussion, when in reality, a much larger ban (all semi-automatic) is being sought.  The assault weapons ban will include many non-assault type guns and that is why it is being contested. We all want safer streets, safer schools and safer homes, but we do not want to live in the world of “Minority Report,” where people are arrested before they have committed any crimes. Perhaps if Republicans explained it that way they would be in a better position.