Triumph of the Vulgarians: Decency is now the new taboo
Triumph of the Vulgarians: Decency is now the new taboo.
Tag: politics
“It’s hard to see how conservatives support it,” he said. “The question is, how angry will they get?”
The budget deal: “It’s hard to see how conservatives support it,” he said. “The question is, how angry will they get?”
As is usual, the Republicans negotiated away something they didn’t have to for a promise of something that they will never get. The stupid party loses again.
The IRS is now harassing the insurance broker who has helped people losing their insurance under Obamacare.
Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS is now harassing the insurance broker who has helped people losing their insurance under Obamacare.
The man received a visit from a Treasury Department Inspector General who demanded personal information about the cancer patient the broker was helping. When this information was refused, the official instructed the broker
to resolve the issue with the IRS immediately, and that if he did not, “you may be visited again by other IRS representatives in your home and we do reserve the right to garnish your wages and lien your assets.”
How nice. Obey the orders of the Obama administration or they will use the IRS to destroy you.
Note also that this harassment is going on right now, six months after the scandal was revealed and Obama claimed he was outraged by it and would put a stop to it. He lied. As he revealed recently in his interview on MSNBC, he sees nothing wrong with this harassment.
I just realized that my post above left out one important detail: The cancer patient had appeared on Fox to describe how he had lost his health insurance because of Obamacare. Almost immediately thereafter both he and his broker received audit notices from the IRS.
MSNBC: “It’s like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 — just less realistic.”
MSNBC: “It’s like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 — just less realistic.”
It is also a continuous two-minute hate session, lasting “hour by tedious hour.” Worse, it is a continuous hate session that far too many Americans like, while too many other Americans look the other way and make believe such hate doesn’t exist.
Yesterday police in Wisconsin celebrated Pearl Harbor Day by issuing tickets to people waving the American flag.
Yesterday police in Wisconsin celebrated Pearl Harbor Day by issuing tickets to people waving the American flag.
Video below the fold. Stick around to the end. As the man says, “The cops can’t scare us off, can they?”
» Read more
Of the 78 times police in Greensboro, North Carolina, fired their pistols in 2012, all but two were to kill someone’s pet.
Does this make you feel safer? Of the 78 times police in Greensboro, North Carolina, fired their pistols in 2012, all but two were to kill someone’s pet.
Another news report suggests that Republicans are preparing to surrender in budget talks.
Another news report suggests that Republicans are preparing to surrender in budget talks.
Senior aides familiar with the talks say the emerging agreement aims to partially repeal the sequester and raise agency spending to roughly $1.015 trillion in fiscal 2014 and 2015. That would bring agency budgets up to the target already in place for fiscal 2016. To cover the cost, Ryan and Murray are haggling over roughly $65 billion in alternative policies, including cuts to federal worker pensions and higher security fees for the nation’s airline passengers.
Republican leaders are also seeking additional savings to knock a small dent in deficits projected to exceed $6 trillion over the next decade. But the deal would do nothing to trim the debt, which is now larger, as a percentage of the economy, than at any point in U.S. history except during World War II. [emphasis mine]
To me, the biggest disappointment of this surrender is that Paul Ryan is negotiating it, proof that he too is no fiscal conservative and worse is far more stupid than I had thought.
No, you can’t keep your medicines either under Obamacare.
No, you can’t keep your medicines either under Obamacare.
The article is long and detailed. It seems a lot of expensive but life-saving drugs might be excluded from many plans because of cost. Worse,
The biggest problem in all of this is that consumers will have a very hard time figuring out where they stand. In many cases, the health plans being offered in the Obamacare exchanges don’t make information about their drug formularies readily available. In some cases, it doesn’t seem to be published anywhere.
The government was supposed to mandate that plans made this information easily accessible. But that never happened.
In fact, state and federal regulators must have approved the health plans without reviewing final drug formularies. Many plans are also not publishing information about their networks of doctors, or when they do; the information is unreliable (listing, for example, doctors who argue that they aren’t part of the plans).
Aren’t you glad those brave Democrats and President Obama shut the government down in October to prevent those evil Republicans from making any changes to Obamacare?
The latest IRS power grab.
Why is the IRS regulating political activity at all?
The answer is that many Democratic politicians and progressive activists think new rules limiting political speech by nonprofits will benefit Democrats politically. Stymied by judicial decisions restricting direct government regulation of political speech, and by a Federal Election Commission whose bipartisan makeup prevents Democratic commissioners from forcing through partisan rules on a party-line vote, these politicians and activists have decided to dragoon the IRS into doing their work.
More precise terms to describe this kind of behavior are fascists and jack-booted thugs.
Obamacare insurance plans are routinely excluding the world’s top hospitals.
Finding out what’s not in it: Obamacare insurance plans are routinely excluding the world’s top hospitals.
Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country.
You pay more for the plan, pay higher co-pays and deductibles, and for these higher expenses you get fewer benefits and excess to fewer good doctors. Why is anyone complaining? Aren’t we all glad the Democrats and Obama are standing firm to defend this law?
Obamacare, where the liberal dream crashes and burns.
Obamacare, where the liberal dream crashes and burns.
The botched website was an unforced catastrophe. But that’s not the real problem with Obamacare. The real problem, as dozens of thoughtful commentators have concluded, is the law itself. Obamacare is a massive policy experiment that seeks to remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy – a body that’s so fantastically complex, with so many players and so many moving parts, that nobody can possibly understand how they all interact. Tweak one part, and other parts will behave in unpredictable ways. Pull on a thread and half the sweater may unravel. Even Max Baucus, the Democratic Senate finance chairman, has warned that implementing a law so complicated could be a “train wreck.”
Generally, the way leftists and liberals have succeeded in gaining power is to work incrementally, in very small steps. This way, the link between their actions and the problems those actions have caused is easily hidden. They can then point to these new problems and demand another small incremental increase in their control and power in order to solve those problems, which in turn causes new problems that they can then use to justify another incremental step. And so forth.
Obamacare, however, broke this pattern. Rather than being incremental, it tried to do it all in one big massive attack. The result is that the policy is very clearly the cause of the disaster, the left can’t hide it, and their entire agenda for the past century now stands exposed as the fraud it is. The only way I can see them surviving this disaster is to try to seize power illegally, another typical leftwing technique that they use often when reality starts to go against them.
The head of India’s research team at its Antarctica base has been recalled after he ordered the shut down of power at the station.
Welcome to the movies: The head of India’s research team at its Antarctica base has been recalled after he ordered the shut down of power at the station.
From October 7 to 12, ISRO’s satellite ground station at Antarctica, lost all transmission when its power supply was allegedly shut down by the team leader of the 32nd winter expedition to Bharati. The scientist, whose name was not revealed, has since been suspended and brought back to Goa. On October 14, NCAOR had also filed a police complaint against the scientist for the ‘wanton act of shutting down power’, said a statement released by the Ministry of Earth Sciences on Saturday.
This story had this tidbit:
It is believed the probe was ordered after the team leader allegedly ordered for the station’s power supply, which is obtained from diesel generators, to be cut off. A former chairman of ISRO, on the condition of anonymity, said: “If shortage of fuel was the issue, why would the ISRO station not take stock of fuel two months before it was to get exhausted and make arrangements for additional supply from South Africa? It is the most obvious thing to do. Unless there is some confusion or some issues, such a thing in Antarctica is unheard of. If power is switched off, people inside will freeze. So why was the power ordered to be cut off and why wait for diesel to get over?”
It also appears that three people are involved in this story, though details remain scant.