Scroll down to read this post.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. I keep the website clean from pop-ups and annoying demands. Instead, I depend entirely on my readers to support me. Though this means I am sacrificing some income, it also means that I remain entirely independent from outside pressure. By depending solely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, no one can threaten me with censorship. You don't like what I write, you can simply go elsewhere.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

3. A Paypal Donation:

4. A Paypal subscription:


5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.


Republican Trumpcare bill might require another vote

Failure theater: The House Republican leadership has not yet officially sent their Obamacare revision bill to the Senate because they have discovered they may have to vote on it again.

According to several aides and other procedural experts, if Republicans send the bill to the Senate now and the CBO later concludes it doesn’t save at least $2 billion, it would doom the bill and Republicans would have to start their repeal effort all over with a new budget resolution. Congressional rules would likely prevent Republicans from fixing the bill after it’s in the Senate, the aides said…

If Republican leaders hold onto the bill until the CBO report is released, then Ryan and his team could still redo it if necessary. That would require at least one more House vote of some sort…

The Republican leadership is a joke. If required to toss a rock into the ocean while standing at the end of a 500 foot long pier they’d still miss, and hit themselves in the face in the process.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

10 comments

  • Garry

    The CBO is also a joke.

    The CBO uses only static analysis, rather than dynamic. According to their rules, raising taxes to 200% would increase revenues dramatically, and lowering them would only lower revenues (they are not allowed to take into account the effects of growth).

    The rule requiring compliance with the CBO should be given the Gordian Knot treatment.

  • The reality is that congress critters are only interested in make-work now. If they actually fix something, they lose. So the plan is to keep making politics insular until the public gives up, goes home and then they can really do anything they want.

    Congress is a joke.

  • Judy

    The old joke is still appropriate…

    “If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?”

  • Cotour

    Obama.

    Since everything that Obama has ever said is actually the opposite of his thinking and intent so everything that he has touched that he calls “progress” is in fact the opposite.

  • Edward

    Cotour wrote: “Since everything that Obama has ever said is actually the opposite of his thinking and intent so everything that he has touched that he calls “progress” is in fact the opposite.

    Obama had the opposite of the Midas touch. Everything Obama touched turned to [ahem] (poop). Every time he went to a company and praised it for its success, it laid off workers soon after. Every policy that he instigated ended up having the opposite effect of what he said he intended. He even bragged that he led from (his) behind, and that is how everything turned out.

  • Cotour

    Edward, I am getting nervous.

    We have not butted heads in a very long time. Any insights?

    Interesting documentation about Obama in a new biography https://youtu.be/hkWoF0sXkgk . I have for the last 9 years described him and his agenda as being based in a Marxist type philosophy, and that, in the long term is what has driven his actions (and in actions) and counter intuitive speak . His biographer takes a different point of view and sees him only being corrupted by raw ambition alone.

    I suspect his receiving $60 million in book advances and Clinton level speaking fees tends to modify ones initial Marxist philosophy based positions?

  • Edward

    Cotour wrote: We have not butted heads in a very long time. Any insights?

    Give it time. I’m sure we will find something to argue over.

    Considering that Obama was raised by communists and Marxists, your original description is most likely correct. He tended to hang out with communists and Marxists, and he even brought some with him into his administration. Having a deep profound political ambition is allowed for communists, socialists, and Marxists, because it allows them to rule over others — because these philosophies assume that most of the masses are unable to run their own lives. After all, if the masses could run their own lives, they wouldn’t be working for less than the managers, owners, and rulers do. Being the leader makes the leader worth more, even in communist, socialist, and Marxist societies, where everyone is supposed to be equal.

    Just because someone is a communist or a Marxist does not mean that he is not greedy. Indeed, as far as I can tell, their leaders live far better than those that they rule, contradictory to their stated philosophy and stated reason for ruling — er — leading their population. They allow themselves to be “capitalists” despite complaining about the capitalist system. Just look at Micheal Moore, who willfully screws his own employees in order to keep more for himself (as he claims capitalists do). I knew such a person in college; he advocated for socialism and called himself a socialist but also admitted being a capitalist, making money selling drugs.

    Marx saw the owners of companies and corporations as living better than the workers, and mistook ownership with management — but back then, owners tended to be the managers. Owners tend to deserve rewards for the risks that they take in investing in companies, and managers tend to deserve rewards for making decisions that keep the companies in business — keeping the workers employed and keeping the owners asset intact. Basic economics determines that a worker without unique skills or talents will not get paid more than market rate, so if the worker wants more, he needs to increase his own value to the company, as both the managers and owners have done.

    Marx did not understand this basic economic truth and decided that if the workers own it, they would get well rewarded as being equals. Unfortunately, it turned out that under Marxist societies the state (government) owned it and the state got all the rewards, which were then distributed to the rulers, who turned out to be more equal than everyone else (as Orwell noted).

    Obama nationalized two of the three auto manufacturers, took over the banks and all of healthcare, and centralized control over other aspects of American life. That guy was power greedy as well as financially greedy.

    By the way, Obama once said that there comes a point when a person has earned enough. Either he hasn’t reached that point yet, or else his philosophy does not apply to himself or his cronies. I think it is the latter, as communists, socialists, and Marxists allow themselves the vices that they complain about in other people (like Micheal Moore does). For them, hypocrisy is natural and acceptable in themselves. Just ask any of your liberal friends, and they will eventually admit that they do many of the things that they insist others should not do. Like driving cars, which cause catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (or climate change, depending upon the liberal).

    Huge book advances and excessive speaking fees are natural for those who are more equal (read: “better”) than the rest of us.

  • Cotour

    Once again you nail it, I can find nothing wrong with your reasoning. I suppose time will fix this lack of head butting eventually.

    As to my Liberal friends. I would like to offer one story I thought extreme and of course an excellent demonstration of intellectual dishonesty and a complete surrender of any thought of what Liberals profess to stand for. And its absolutely true.

    One Liberal lady executive in the private sector I know hires a woman who it turns out just found out she was pregnant.

    “Oh congratulations”.

    She contrived a reason to let her go soon after.

    “But doesn’t that go against your sense of fairness and equality in the work place for women?” I asked.

    “FK her! ” Was her reply.

    “That little bitch is not going to get me to pay for her baby”.

    Good for thee but not for me it turns out is how a real so called Liberal thinks in real life when its their private money and not the governments. Just one more real life example of the intellectual dishonesty of them all.

  • Edward

    Cotour,
    Please find out whether that liberal lady executive believes in single payer healthcare. If so, she favors being the one to pay for her ex-employee’s baby despite her claim to the contrary. She just fails to see it that way.

    It reminds me of the economic problem of that which is seen and that which is not seen. If you don’t see it, it must not exist. Some people (e.g. many liberals) are like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” so profoundly unintelligent that, if you can’t see it, it assumes it can’t see you Ravenous_Bugblatter_Beast_of_Traal ) and have never-ending greed and mind-boggling stupidity, so they are unwilling to accept that the economics that they don’t see can be more valid than the economics that they do see.

    Bastiat pondered the consequences of the part of the economic equation that is not seen vs. the part that is seen, and that many people assume that the part they see is good.
    http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

    The Broken Window example shows that people easily believe that breaking windows is good for the economy, providing the glazier with additional employment and income, but it also asks if that same philosophy holds up for burning down Paris to give house builders additional employment and income. Clearly, destruction of property does more harm than the good that is seen by the casual observer.

    Similarly, if that liberal lady executive were providing her employees health insurance as a matter of routine, then it is the insurer who pays for the employee’s baby, along with the rest of us who buy insurance from that insurance company (by “us” I mean “not me” as I cannot afford both Obamacare’s supposedly affordable insurance premium rates and meals, so I have opted for the meals over the insurance; I could sell my house in order to afford both for a few years, but ironically Obamacare was supposed to prevent people from selling their houses in order to pay for expensive healthcare, not cause them to sell their houses in order to pay for expensive health insurance premiums).

    If you were to call out that lady on her hypocrisy, she may say that she is proud of her hypocrisy.

    Isn’t a liberal capitalist a contradiction in terms (oxymoron or paradox)?

  • Edward

    I had tried to link to the following site, but it didn’t take:
    http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Ravenous_Bugblatter_Beast_of_Traal

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *