Chief Propaganda Minster Jay Carney

I enjoy the occasional sparring on the political forums.  Not because I expect to change anyone’s mind, but just for the entertainment of the process.  It’s like a hobby.  But occasionally I actually learn something new.  The other day, in the course of a discussion on, what else, Obamacare, my left leaning antagonist mentioned a quote by Speaker of the House John Boehner, alleging that Obamacare would be a major job killer for the years 2010 and 2011.  The time frame seemed a little squirrely, so I asked for a source.

And the adventure began.

The “source” turned out to be a link to ‘The Last Word,’ Larry O’Donnell’s MSNBC show.  O’Donnell referred to a video clip of Press Secretary Jay Carney saying that Boehner said that (at about the minute mark).

A video of somebody saying that somebody said something isn’t exactly my idea of a source.  At that point I decided to check Google.  Ten seconds later, I had this:

A tweet from Boehner of a Bloomberg News Report with the title, “Health Care costs will skyrocket next year thanks to ObamaCare.”  So there was never a Boehner quote. It was the title of an article.

Now I don’t blame my forum opponent so much.  Most lefties just depend on their usual propaganda sources and I didn’t have much expectation that he would have a legitimate source.  I don’t even blame Larry O’Donnell so much. His job is to be a propagandist for the administration. If he lies, well, consider the network he works for.  That’s what they do.  The entire network is geared to provide talking points.

But I do blame Jay Carney.  He’s the Press Secretary of the Obama administration.  He has an obligation to be factual, or at least as factual as should be expected at the time he says something.  Although he’s supposed to provide talking points, they are supposed to be somewhat moored to the truth.

But there is actually more blame to go around; the Washington Press Corps.  Carney made that statement in an entire room of Washington reporters.  Supposedly these are supposed to be savvy, insiders who should have sniffed out a falsehood.  Instead, they bought it hook, line, and sinker.  Not one of them had the presence of mind to fact check Carney.  So the fact that the White House Press Corps won’t do their job means that Carney, rather than functioning as the White House Press Secretary, gets to function as a Propagandist instead.

What Passes for Racial Profiling in Miami Gardens

The New York Times reports on yet another example of sweaty southern law enforcement going after the black man. The charge?  Working While Black.

“The mayor and police department of a predominantly black Miami suburb have been hit with a federal civil rights lawsuit over allegations of aggressive police tactics, including stop and frisk searches and arbitrary arrests, targeting African Americans.

The lawsuit against the city of Miami Gardens, filed on Friday in U.S. District Court, alleges a long history of police abuse and racial profiling in the crime-plagued suburb on the northern outskirts of Miami.

… Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert III, lead defendant in the lawsuit, did not immediately return phone calls or an email from Reuters seeking comment.

Another plaintiff in the lawsuit is identified as Earl Sampson, 28, an African-American and employee of the Quick Stop who was repeatedly stopped once a week for four years, or about 288 times, the suit says.

On numerous occasions, it said Sampson had been arrested for trespassing while at work stocking the shelves or taking out the trash at the Quick Stop store.”

Now it’s hard to argue that there might actually be legitimate law enforcement purpose in arresting someone 288 times for trespassing at your own place of employment while working.  So something has clearly gone off the rails in Miami Gardens, but is this a case of racial profiling as the New York Times thinks?

Looking at the defendants named in the case, I wonder…

The Mayor, Oliver G. Gilbert III

The former Mayor, Shirley Gibbons

Chief of Police Matthew Boyd

Deputy Police Chief Paul Miller

You get the idea.

I’m curious as to why this employee and this convenience store is being targeted and I think it’s clear that there is some targeting going on.  But I think it’s more complicated than just racial.  If the primary defendants in the lawsuit are black, it seems like calling this racial profiling is missing the boat.  But I guess when all you have is a racial hammer, everything looks like stop and frisk.

Obamacare Math

I’m no mathematician, but I’ve come to some interesting conclusions from “running the numbers” on the Obamacare debacle.

First, about 14 million people are covered under the individual health insurance market.

Of those, in 2013, 13% were covered by grandfathered plans; or plans that could be renewed for 2014.  So that’s 1.82 million who for sure can “keep their plans;” at least for 2014.

That means as many as 87% of individual health plans could be cancelled.

We know for sure that as of last week (this is a week by week changing number) 4.8 million people have already gotten cancellation notices.  These are people who were covered this year, and if they want to continue to be covered, need to choose and purchase new insurance plans by January 1^st.

The CBO estimated that 7 million people would be covered in the health insurance exchanges in 2014, but that was an estimate based on a fully functional Obamacare website.  I’ve no doubt that that the Obamacare site will eventually be fixed, but how long will that take?  I’m pretty comfortable guessing that the problems will not be fixed by the end of November, as promised by the administration.

The administration estimates that 200,000 people have signed up for coverage with the exchanges by mid-November.  That means as of right now, of the people who had coverage under the individual health insurance market this year, 4.6 million of them still don’t have coverage for 2014.   Although I’m sure that the number of enrolled people will steadily increase over the next few weeks, does anyone think that the remaining people who lost their coverage because of the Obamacare requirements will have coverage by the start of the New Year?

Even the Obama administration isn’t that optimistic.

That means that thanks to Obamacare, more people will start off the year without health insurance coverage than had it this year.  Congratulations President Obama!  You’ve successfully wrecked the nation’s health insurance market!   I think the administration should have applied the lessons learned from the Hypocratic Oath: First, do no harm.  Instead, the administration burned down the house, only to learn that their plans for the new house were incomplete.

If the percentage of uninsured in this country is greater this time next year than it is now, it will be pretty clear who will be responsible for it.  I hope someone is smart enough to remind people of that for the elections.

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Schadenfreude, and the Obamacare Timebomb

Considering the disaster of a rollout that Obamacare turned into, you would expect a lot more schadenfreude from the political right.  After all, it’s the President’s signature domestic policy.  For good or ill (and it’s mostly ill), this will be the domestic program that will be identified with President Obama.  And so far it’s a mess.  So why aren’t conservatives happy?  Part of it I think is that the right is still licking its wounds from the shutdown debacle.  They are still trying to heal a party that was pointless split for no good reason.  See?  I’m still trying to heal.  But the major part of this is that unlike a lot of wacky social programs that the left invents, screws up, and leaves to move on to the next big thing, healthcare is something that affects everyone.  The damage that Obamacare has done to the entire nation’s healthcare system, not just to the minority in the individual insurance market, is extensive, and much of it is permanent.  So there is no schadenfreude to be found in mocking the woman who said, “I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it.”

Fool, you’ve doomed us all.

If Obamacare had only ruined the healthcare system for those who supported it, then yes, the right would have the freedom to cackle with glee and point fingers, but eventually, this will affect everyone.

OK we’re still doing the finger pointing, but we’re not happy about it.

Right now the big Obamacare story is the website, which is a mess, but eventually the website will get fixed.  The problem goes far beyond the website.  The health insurance plans in the exchange depend on getting enough young health people to enroll to keep the cost of premiums down for the next year.  They need people paying but not using healthcare to afford the people who will enroll and will be sick and will be using healthcare; a lot.  That’s what insurance is all about after all.  If those young healthy people don’t show up and enroll, then you are left with more people taking out of the insurance pool than are putting into it.  That spells extremely high rates for premiums in 2015, or collapse of the exchange insurance groups.

And what could be pulling healthy young people from enrolling in an exchange insurance plan?  In a word; Medicaid.

So far (and admittedly this is a changing number) the majority of enrollees under the Obamacare exchanges are enrolling in Medicaid.  Under Obamacare the Medicaid expansion increased the Medicaid Eligibility to 138% of the Federal Poverty Line.  So all of those young healthy hipsters, particularly the ones who have extremely low incomes like students, are being enrolled, but they are being enrolled as Medicaid clients, not people in the actual private insurance groups.  So rather than contributing to the insurance pool, these healthy young people will basically be put on the dole, to drain the Treasury of funds to support healthcare that they could have otherwise been contributing to.

So if in the upcoming year we have insurance plans filled with the sick, while the healthy coast on Medicaid, than that’s a bomb that will blow Obamacare wide open.

Great plan geniuses.

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Tea Party Defeats Itself

Just like with the Fiscal Cliff, the House drove us right to the brink until the Senate grabbed hold of the steering wheel, with the news that the Senate has put together a deal to end the government shut down, at least for a while.

As I predicted two months ago, there was no plan, nor any strategy for using the budget CR to defund Obamacare. Everything that happened, from the media spin, to plummeting poll numbers, to final defeat was all perfectly predictable.  There was never any reason that President Obama would negotiate.  He was never going to negotiate on defunding Obamacare. In fact, it’s obvious that he would have been perfectly willing to let us go right through the debt ceiling.  In fact, that could have worked to his advantage.  Any economic upheaval that would have been brought about by stopping the government’s ability to borrow more money could be blamed on the Republicans.  The 2016 campaign slogans write themselves.  Republicans broke the economy, Obama came in and fixed it, and Republicans broke it again.  Are you voting for the breakers or the fixers?

The only thing not predictable was how poorly the Obama administration bungled their handling of the shut down.  Between Harry Reid’s War on Cancer Kids to the administration’s fake and unnecessary closing of the nation’s monuments and other static displays that are normally opened 24/7 without being manned anyway, including the World War II Memorial; which lead to the unpleasant sight of Park Police strong arming elderly national heroes. How badly have you bungled when you pick a fight with cancer kids and World War II veterans in the same week?

Even the administration’s high fiving themselves on the fact that they were “winning” didn’t make them look too smug, since they were in fact winning.  Considering that a government shutdown could only help the administration, there was really no way for them to lose, and that’s what irritates me the most; the Tea Party picked a fight in which there was no option that would have allowed them to win.

Although Ted Cruz is given most of the credit/blame for this debacle, I think a good portion of that has to go to talk radio.  Senators Cruz and Lee have appeared on Hannity multiple times talking up their “Don’t Fund it” strategy, but they never exactly explained how the strategy was going to actually achieve its goal of defunding Obamacare.  At no time did Hannity or Rush, who also was in favor of charging this windmill, question how this was supposed to succeed.  That’s a question I’ve been asking for two months and the reason I never got an answer is because there never was an answer.  Meanwhile talk radio egged it on.  On September 25^th Hannity had Rand Paul on as a guest, who explained to Hannity that there was no mathematical way there would be votes to defund Obamacare.  Hannity seemed stunned and surprised that Rand couldn’t insure this strategy would work.  As recently as October 3^rd, Rush was insisting that the Democrats were imploding on the issue.

The only thing that imploded was the Republican chances of winning the Senate in 2014.

UN Ambassador Puts ‘The Onion’ Out of Business

Every time I think I’m done talking about Syria, the Obama administration pulls me back in.  But this time I’m pulled in not to discuss policy, but to just throw up my hands and give out a hearty “Oh Good Grief,” Charlie Brown style.

I’ve previously wrote here and here about the absolutely amateurish way the Obama administration is handling their self made Syria “crisis.”  But it seems the amateurishness and naivety runs all the way through this administration.

Last Friday UN ambassador Samantha Power spoke to the Center for American Progress, a left wing advocacy organization, on Syria, in an effort to shore up support among President Obama’s normally reliable allies; some of whom are feeling a bit queasy in supporting missile strikes against Syria. I don’t know successful she was in convincing a group of people who are normally anti-war no matter what that this was a good old fashioned humanitarian war, but she did reveal an astonishing lack of realism regarding Russia and Iran as she related in her speech:

“We worked with the U.N. to create a group of inspectors and then worked for more than six months to get them access to the country on the logic that perhaps the presence of an investigative team in the country might deter future attacks or, if not, at a minimum, we thought perhaps a shared evidentiary base could convince Russia or Iran — itself a victim of Saddam Hussein’s monstrous chemical weapons attacks in 1987-1988 — to cast loose a regime that was gassing its people. We expanded and accelerated our assistance to the Syrian opposition. We supported the U.N. Commission of Inquiry. “

So… our UN ambassador, who is part of the team that is crafting US foreign policy, thought that by showing proof that Syria was actually using chemical weapons; Iran and Russia, on some sort of vague humanitarian grounds, would drop their support of the Syrian government.  I can only conclude that we have high school model UN’s that are more serious than this administration’s UN ambassador.

There doesn’t seem to be much to add to that.  I can’t imagine that the governing class of either Russia or Iran cares about videos of gassed children.  These are amoral and deadly serious regimes that are playing the long game. The fact that the Obama administration thought that would make a difference in Russian or Iranian calculations is ridiculous.  Did they really think that those governments were just sitting around blindly supporting the Syrian government and would be shocked, shocked (once again, with apologies to Captain Renault!) that Syrians are using gas on the battlefield?

I think this puts the administration beyond parody.  I mean, how do you top that? That’s why I think the Obama administration has finally broken the back of The Onion.  There is no way The Onion will be able craft a more ludicrous story than this real one.

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Syria Backtrack

I was as shocked as anyone that President Obama did an about face on firing his phallic symbol-like missiles in Assad’s general direction.  Although I had previously called the administration amateurish, they managed to redefine the word amateur down.

First we’re going to attack, then we’re going to get Congressional approval, but don’t worry, that doesn’t matter, since Obama states he still has the authority to attack anyway, and will, regardless of the vote.

Huh?

Although there are conspiracy theories that the rebels, not the Assad government, actually used chemical weapons as a false flag to trick the US into intervening, I prefer to consider such theories ridiculous until proven otherwise.   As far as figuring out a position on what to do in Syria, I’m just taking the administration’s word that the intelligence is good, and that Assad is the culprit.

However that doesn’t give guidance on how the US should react.

I would really like to support the President in this.  Politics stops at the water’s edge and all that’ however Obama has managed to make it as difficult as possible to support a policy in which the publically stated goals are to accomplish nothing.  They’re not to destroy Assad’s chemical weapons, cripple the regime, or do anything of any military significance. It’s a military mission with no military objectives, and frankly, not even political ones.

Syria isn’t a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, so in a technical sense, they didn’t actually violate “International law.”  The administration is well aware of that since they use terminology “International Norms,” which means things that the international community, such as it is, doesn’t like.  Although no one in the international community feels their norms were violated enough to actually do something about it.

Obama should have just fired his missiles last week without all of the foreplay and advanced warning.  We would have already been on to another issue by now with the feeling that we had sort of accomplished something.  Instead, there was the desperate pleading for international support, an embarrassing House of Commons vote, and now an upcoming Congressional vote that’s likely to be even more embarrassing.

And how will Congress vote?  Very unconventionally apparently.  Noted warmonger Rep. Nancy Pelosi, after wresting with the issue with her 5 year old grandson, is on board to attack Syria. And John McCain, between Smartphone games of poker, is always up for another bombing.  How will the rest of the Congress vote?  It’s not as easy to predict.  Although I can guess how a certain young Illinois lawmaker would have voted:

Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now let me be clear–I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

But the 2002 edition of Barrack Obama was quite a bit different from the current model.

The Real White Privilege

Representative Charlie Rangel, joined noted Zimmerman trial witness Rachel “Dee-Dee” Jeantel, in bringing racial slurs to the forefront of American consciousness once again.  Of course they’re not the only ones, but the term “Cracker” is getting quite the workout lately in the American media.  In discussing the Tea Party, Rangel said:

Rangel (Photo credit: Georgetown Voice)

“It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police. They didn’t care about how they looked,” 

Leaving the Tea Party aspect of it aside, I’m fascinated that the word cracker is getting so much of a recent work out in recent public statements.  It’s generated a great deal of online commentary, revolving around is it a racial slur, is it a good racial slur, and should white people be offended by that racial slur?

When it comes to racial slurs, there is still a disparate impact between the use of what is now euphemistically referred to as the “N Word,” and virtually every other attempted racial slur.  For Paula Deen, the use of the N Word 30 years ago effectively ended her career.  For Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper, he’s removed himself from the team and is now seeking counseling.  Yes that’s right, counseling.

Of course there are a few outliers.  Tim Allen recently gave an interview in which he argued that as a comedian, he should be allowed to say the N Word.  At least so far, there seem to be little major reaction.  Allen’s TV show, Last Man Standing, was renewed for another season.  No Michael Richards treatment for him.

Rangel or anyone using the term cracker is just something I cannot seem to get worked up about.  The truth is, there are not any good racial insults for white people.  Oh there is quite a list of different terms, but they have all of the effectiveness of a wet firecracker.  Oops, there’s that word cracker again.  I was born in Georgia, and that was practically a State nickname.  My father called me a Georgia Cracker when I was growing up there, and has yet to appear on the Today Show to give a sobbing an incoherent apology for it.

I think when it comes to derogatory racial slurs for whites; this is an area in which black people just cannot compete on an even playing field. As a white person, I just can’t be racially insulted. Cracker? Sorry Charlie (Rangel). I remember during the 1970’s TV sitcoms tried to tell us that honky was a racial slur, but I laughed and laughed whenever George Jefferson would call a white person honky. So call me an Ofay honky cracker if you want, I’ll just laugh.  It just sounds funny.

Rangel could have spewed the term with all the ugliness, hate and vitriol of any KKK’er, and it still would have been more funny than insulting. Calling him the N-word however, would have probably been an emotional kick in the gut to him. So it’s not a fair fight. There isn’t a racial slur from his arsenal of hate that would affect me in the slightest, other than amuse me, but he’s a powerful Congressman, and the lowliest white guy, even a hobo or prisoner in lock-up, could emotionally wreck him with a few slurs.

That’s the real white privilege.

What hath Trayvon Wrought?

I was not planning on writing about the Martin-Zimmerman saga again.  For one thing, I just wasn’t that into it.  I had the normal amount of public interest in the story, and since it was a local one, it’s always interesting to watch your local area mischaracterized by the national press.  But it wasn’t an obsession for me and I thought my previous post would be my last take on the subject.

Al Sharpton (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But post verdict, the issue refused to die.  My twitter feed, my Facebook news feed, my web forums, and my television news are all filled with the results of the post verdict world, and it is not pretty.  The MSM is insisting that this is racial issue, with Trayvon now elevated into the exalted ranks of civil rights martyrs such as Emmitt Till and James Chaney.  The New York Times, which basically functions as the editor to every newspaper and TV newsroom in the country, has declared it a racial issue.  So by the preponderance of noise, if not reason or evidence; it’s a racial issue.

And what made George Zimmerman the 21^st Century Bull Connor and George Wallace combined?

He mentored black children in the neighborhood;

He tried to raise awareness of police ignoring the beating of a black man;

He took a black girl to the prom;

He had a black business partner;

He was a registered Democrat and Obama supporter;

and was part black himself.

So George Zimmerman, who told family members he supported Obama for President because he wanted to end the Presidency as a club for white men, found himself declared a white man, and a racist one to boot, even being slandered by innuendo by the very President he supported.  Of course, someone could have an item or two off of that check list and still be a racist, but all of them, with no actual proof otherwise?

Considering that there are actual racial crimes that occur on a regular basis, what made the press champion this phony racial issue?

I think it’s all due to Al Sharpton, the most powerful media influence in America.  The fact that he is so powerful is fairly amazing.  He hosts a low rated show on a low rated network, but was able to galvanize a nation into following his racial witch hunt all the way to Sanford, Florida.  And why did Sharpton pick that case, when there is an abundance of real racial cases to choose from?

That requires knowing a little something of Sharpton’s history, and as someone who has been a Sharpton follower since the Tawana Brawley debacle, Sharpton has created quite a reputation as a fraud and huckster, and an anti Semitic one as well.

So I think, and let me emphasize that this is just speculation, that Sharpton’s interest was piqued when he heard the name Zimmerman.  I think Sharpton intended to create Crown Heights all over again. Of course, even though Zimmerman turned out not to be Jewish, he apparently could still stand in for white, and he was presented as such, leading the New York Times to include the term “White Hispanic” in its style book;  apparently with a picture of George Zimmerman by the phrase.

So Sharpton, along with MSM, set up a fake racial issue, and have promulgated it fairly successfully for the past year, with really no effective counter narrative.  They’ve managed to increase racial division in this country and seem to intend on continuing it as long as possible. For liberal whites, it serves as a vehicle to drive their agenda, which is increased gun control and elimination of legal protections for self defense.  And what do Black people get out of this?  Anger, hurt, and distrust of their fellow Americans.

Not a great bargain in my opinion.

And the biggest outrage of them all?  The Justice Department is setting up an email address to receive tips to assist in the George Zimmerman investigation.  Now, given that the criminal trial is already over, what “tips” could the Justice Department be seeking?  Why, to charge Zimmerman with Federal Civil Rights violations. And to do that,  they need evidence that Zimmerman is racist.  So if Zimmerman used the N-word in Middle School, he could find himself indicted for felony charges.

So the entire weight of the Federal government is going after one guy to see if he told a racist joke at any point in his life.  If he did, it better be one about gringos.

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L’affaire Zimmerman

Now that the verdict is in, I feel I need to take responsibility and admit I was wrong.  When the name Zimmerman first became a household word in March of last year, I correctly predicted that Zimmerman would be indicted, however I also felt, up until last night, that he would be convicted.  So I was surprised to  see “Not Guilty” on Drudge.  Given that I’ve had a pretty good track record in outguessing the experts, I have to concede that even a stopped expert can be right twice a day.  Although the “system” seemed to work in a judicial sense, justice was never the purpose of the trial; it was intended to be a revolutionary court that would find Zimmerman guilty of racism in the first degree.

George Zimmerman (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

The ironic thing is that like most revolutionary courts, eventually they turn on, and eat, their own.  Zimmerman was an Obama supporter, and was as much a wanna-be community organizer as a wanna-be cop.  Just like Paula Deen, an Obama supporter, found herself voted most buttery racist in America.  So now, Deen is the symbol of genteel Southern racism and Zimmerman is now the number one creepy ass racist cracker in the country.

This was never a case about doughy neighborhood watchman who shot a teenager in the heart and claimed self defense, this has always been a case a Black kid shot by Hispanic guy who was standing in for White.  Race has been the only aspect of this case that made it a national story.  It’s colored (yes, pun intended of course) the view of the two actors in our little racial drama.  There was St. Skittles, the honor student who was viciously attacked by a cop wanna-be, who was angry that these “assholes, they always get away.”  Or, there was Community Activist George Zimmerman, who cared about his community and tried to get justice from the Sanford Police Department after they tried to cover up the beating of a black man who found himself threatened one rainy night by no_limit_nigga, a thug wanna-be who jumped Zimmerman, knocked him down, and told him that, “you’re gonna die tonight.”

At this point in the narrative, it’s customary to ask rhetorically, which is true?  Both?  Neither?  Actually it doesn’t matter.  Since this is strictly a racial issue, you pick a side and adopt their arguments.   You don’t need to worry about the truth, that’s already been picked out for you.  And if revolutionary courts don’t do the job, then on to Holder’s Justice Department to once again inflict double jeopardy on a new defendant.  Between a Justice Department civil rights investigation, and civil suit, Zimmerman’s trial isn’t over, the trials of George Zimmerman are just beginning.

To you, Tom Wolfe, who correctly predicted the template of racial “justice!”

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