Hat tip John Speedie for audio and Jihad Watch
Time to take out the garbage again.
We begin with John Heinz Kerry, our kept man at Foggy Bottom, who is once again on the prowl, this time back in Geneva hunting for that elusive Nobel Peace Prize. Whether it's trying to ram a deal down Israel's throat, get Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood back in power in Egypt, or sign a deal-any deal with those trustworthy mullahs in Teheran, Kerry is on the job. Neville Chamberlain must be drinking champagne in his grave.
While Kerry fouls things up overseas, Kathleen Sibelius has created sheer chaos at home with that great Affordable Care Act and her high tech website. Trying to get through that is like trying to get to the end of Super Mario Brothers.
Out here in California, LA CAIR director Hussam Ayloush angrily told a questioner at the CAIR conference in Anaheim last Saturday that CAIR is a civil rights organization that doesn't involve itself in Middle Eastern affairs.......
....and that the questioner was an Islamophobe for asking.
I guess that's why CAIR is co-sponsoring an anti-Israel bash in Irvine of December 7 featuring such academic "luminaries" as Hatem Bazian of UC Berkeley and Sohail Daulatzai of UC Irvine, as well as old Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild, an outfit that was founded in the 1930s as a legal arm of the Communist Party USA.
That's right.
Speaking of academia, this site has been featuring some heretofore unknown "centers of learning" on a few of our university campuses. Try these on for size:
Islamophobia Research and Documentation Center at UC Berkeley run by the aforementioned Bazian.
Center for Right-Wing Studies at UC Berkeley
Your tax dollars at work, folks (with generous subsidies from Saudi Arabia, I guess).
Switch reels
How'd you like to have Jay Carney's job right now?
Now that James Brown is dead and buried (?), this guy has to be the hardest working man in show business. Every day he has to walk out in front of the once-friendly White House press corps and make Obama look good while trying to explain Obamacare and all the other monumental screw ups like IRS, NSA and such. He might as well be the publicist for Laurel and Hardy.
Meanwhile, on the matrimonial front, it appears 79-year-old Charlie Manson has found his trophy wife, a 25-year-old successor to Squeaky Fromme, who is known only as "Star".
Mr Right
She runs a worldwide nonprofit organization called, "Release Charles Manson now." Here is their statement:
"We KNOW Charles Manson was not given his rights in a court of law, and that he has been illegally incarcerated by the California Department of Corrections for the past 40 years. This blatant injustice will no longer be tolerated. Thousands of people around the world understand that Manson has been illegally tried in and by the media. He is obviously a political prisoner."
Note to Charlie: If Star doesn't work out, there is always Boston College professor Natana DeLong-Bas
"The eyes never lie."
Speaking of injustices, Kennedy justice seems to be prevailing again as nephew Michael Skakel's murder conviction has been overturned due to "the incompetence" of his defense council, one Micky Sherman, who just happens to be one of the top criminal defense attorneys in the country. Skakel is now free on bond.
Don't forget, Fousesquawkers; only 6 more weeks until the announcement of the 2013 Jerk of the Year. There are plenty of worthy contestants. Get your nominations in soon, so I can throw them in the waste paper basket. Just think: Hillary Clinton's reign is (maybe) only 6 weeks from ending-until her new reign as president begins in 3 years.
" I can't wait-for either."
In case you are wondering whatever happened to Janet Napolitano (2010 winner), she is at an undisclosed location trying to get a handle on her new gig as president of the University of California. I can't even tell you whether she is in Southern California or Northern California. It's so secret, they haven't even told her. The poor gal can't even step foot on one of her campuses because the little rascals will protest. (Don't ask me why. They should adore her.)
"I have a dream (act)."
"Th, th, that's all, Folks."
(I'm sure I left something out.)
Jerk of the year? John Boehner, of course. I don't suppose Fousesquawk has the guts to admit it though.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many members that Charles Manson support group has anyway? His new trophy wife and... three others? Seven? 133? They're spitting in the wind. Nobody even in California is crazy enough to release Charles Manson.
(Yes elwood, I said nobody should serve more than 25 years without being CONSIDERED for parole. I didn't say anyone who considered Charles Manson would release him. I wouldn't.)
Now, as to the Affordable Care Act:
Straight from one of the best blogs at The American Conservative,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/healthcare-gov-the-preliminary-autopsy/#post-comments
this comment from a small business owner who knows what it means to meet a payroll:
"I’m a vice president and co-owner of a 35-person consulting firm in CA that specializes in engineering services. During the mid-2000’s our health insurance costs went up by double digits for several years in a row. The math is daunting: compounded at these rates, it doesn’t take very many years for costs to double. The hit to our bottom line was severe, and at one point we had to switch to a less expensive and less generous plan (higher deductibles and co-pays, no vision coverage, no dental, etc) in order to continue provide at least some minimum level of health coverage for our employees. Fast forward to November 2013. We have just received quotes from a variety of health insurance providers (both HMO’s and PPO’s) for plans that are compliant with new Affordable Car Act requirements, and our costs to provide a level of coverage in 2014 comparable to what we have right now will go down by 3%. You may not appreciate how miraculous this is if you weren’t facing 22% annual increases in heath care costs in the mid-2000’s. We are going to pass the 2014 savings on to our employees by offering plans that have richer benefits (lower deductibles and co-pays, etc). So that’s the actual on-the-ground experience with Obamacare for our company. I’m personally grateful that my young adult kids have been able to stay on my insurance thanks to the ACA. Fortunately, I haven’t had to deal with the buggy healthcare.gov website, but I understand that even John Boehner was able to successfully log on recently and create an account (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/21/boehner-tries-eventually-enrolls-in-obamacare/).
From my perspective as a business owner, most of the partisan attacks on the ACA are completely divorced from practical reality. The insistence that the status quo of the 2000’s was just fine and the US has “the best health care in the world” completely ignores the cost curve and outcomes for what we pay relative to other modern economies. Republicans did nothing to address the spiraling costs of health care back when they had control of the White House and Senate. They did, however, pass a huge and unfunded prescription drug entitlement that benefitted a key part of their base. Enjoy your schadenfreude over the bungled roll out of healthcare.gov, because it won’t last forever. Once the problems with the site are fixed and people can use it to comparatively shop for health insurance on the exchanges, I predict that market forces will produce a better range of options at lower costs for consumers, just like the wonks at Heritage envisaged when they developed the basic policy behind “Obamacare”."