The recent primary ‘scare’ to the GOP Political Industrial Complex (herein referred to as “the Establishment”) has been misread by just about everyone in the “Establishment”. One of the few exceptions was Jay Cost:

It is important to differentiate the candidates challenging the establishment from the voters backing those challengers. The candidates are either amateurs with no political background or upstarts who refuse to wait their place in line. They often have fewer funds, employ less experienced consultants, and lack the personal assets necessary to campaign effectively. Occasionally, a virtuoso rock star like Marco Rubio emerges, but the typical insurgent is lucky just to know how to hold the guitar.

And yet they have been giving the establishment fits and starts. Cantor lost. Cochran almost lost. McConnell hung on, but had to hustle. And Graham finished with less than 60 percent of the vote despite having worked every angle he could for years.

Establishment politicos often act superciliously toward these challengers, but in so doing they are missing a profound point: The Republican electorate is exceedingly angry and frustrated with their leadership.

It was so heated in Mississippi that Thad Cochran and “the Establishment” had to call out for help from Democrats, who also understand what the Libertarian Tea Party will do to big government if it gains enough political clout:

Surprisingly, more votes were cast in the runoff than in the June 3 primary. McDaniel increased his vote from 155,000 on June 3 to 184,600 last night. But the 25-35,000 Dems who crossed over to vote for Cochran gave him the extra margin to surpass his opponent.

You know “the Establishment” is wigging out if the GOP has to call on Democrats to save them – and the Dems come running! That is some serious concern on display there.

Back to Jay Cost to state the obvious:

The fact that these second- or third-raters can give established leaders such a scare is proof positive. The party’s leadership can snicker at these challengers all it wants, but it had better understand that its own voters are so fed up with them that they are using these deeply flawed candidates to send them a message.

The fact is GOP House Leader Cantor went down in his primary, and Cochran almost did. The fact is the facade has been ripped from the GOP Establishment and as long as they promulgate Big, Bumbling, Bloated government they are fair targets of the Libertarian base of the GOP.

Too many times we saw the GOP kick the fiscal hard choices down the road. Too many times we saw the DC elite pretend to cut back government in those mythical ‘out years’ – which exist right along with those ‘shovel ready’ jobs. Many in the conservative AND independent voting block are fed up. So fed up it took herculean efforts to save an Establishment Senator:

To be clear, the $23 million here is on top of the cash spent by each GOP incumbent’s own campaign. It doesn’t include a dime of what, say, Mitch McConnell’s operation dropped to defend his seat. This is crony money, showered on establishment candidates to make sure the gravy train keeps running.

Emphasis mine. The fact it took so many resources to stop the insurgent wave this round is an indication that the Libertarian Tea Party (not to be confused with the Social Conservatives) voters are still out there, still motivated and still ready to clean house. The insurgency is not dead nor abating.

Probably thanks to President Obama’s Lame Duck madness – where he has decided to ignore the checks and balances of government and implement liberal fantasies across the board. As Obama runs amok the Libertarian backlash builds.  And as it rises it will make sure to clean out more than Democrats in order to set this country right. At some point the parties disappear from view and it is just “the Establishment” in the cross-hairs. Propaganda can only do so much to deter this backlash (refer to Goebbels and the Nazis who also created an enormous backlash in their country before the world rose up to crush their mad power grab).

Obama is leaving such deep scars on this nation it will take years to undo. Years of reminders of why DC over stepped its mandate, years of reminders on why we need to cut back government. Obamacare, borders flooded with illegal immigrants, botched federal programs, dying veterans on interminable waiting list, overpriced green energy, a stalled economy – all these will linger for a decade or more.

The left had the childish idea that if they just opened the flood gates sAmerica could not undo the damage. But anything can be undone once America puts its mind to it.  And the flood gates are actually producing so much damage and stench America will be sick of “big government” for generations. Obama’s desire to rule the minutiae of our lives, like he even has a clue!

Obama is doing the GOP a favor by exposing the Political Industrial Complex for what it is – a greedy, taxpayer money grab. But if the GOP is also caught stuffing its face at the trough, it will be rightfully targeted for termination along with the rest of the Big Government Establishment.

 I will let Jay Cost bring it home:

the Republican party says one thing to get elected, then does another once elected. It pledges on the campaign trail to reduce the scope of government, but in Washington, D.C. it perpetuates the Leviathan, often in support of well-heeled interest groups.

…

Compare his record with the preamble to the 2012 GOP platform:

This platform affirms that America has always been a place of grand dreams and even grander realities; and so it will be again, if we return government to its proper role, making it smaller and smarter. If we restructure government’s most important domestic programs to avoid their fiscal collapse. If we keep taxation, litigation, and regulation to a minimum. If we celebrate success, entrepreneurship, and innovation. If we lift up the middle class. If we hand over to the next generation a legacy of growth and prosperity, rather than entitlements and indebtedness.

Every Republican candidate can cite a version of this by heart; it has been the gist of the party’s message for nearly 80 years. Yet Cochran is not in D.C. to fulfill these promises. His purpose is to perpetuate what Theodore Lowi once called “interest group liberalism.” He is the modern equivalent of the Gilded Age spoilsman; he parcels federal resources to well-placed factions that, in turn, help secure his reelection. This runs directly contrary to what the Republican party promises to do.

The days are over when the voters will be forced to choose between two options for big government. The Establishment GOP needs to go they way of the Dodo – and fast.

Addendum: Let me head this off up front.  While the total number of soldiers dying (on average) in Afghanistan is 139 per year and on VA waiting lists is “over 100” per year, the percent dying will tilt in favor of the VA who should see more soldiers each year than Afghanistan does. With that sad – each individual life is precious, and that fact the VA wait list can kill as many as the KIAs in Afghanistan is scandalous. If someone is running to percentages to try and make the case the VA is not as bad as Afghanistan, maybe they can explain why waiting for medical service in the US should be as deadly as fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda? – end addendum

The above is the Veterans Administration mission statement. It is an oath to those who defended this nation by risking their lives. It was an oath given to this nation’s veterans – as noted- by President Abraham Lincoln.

But it turns out the Obama VA itself is nearly as deadly as all our recent war efforts:

More than 1,000 veterans have died over the last decade as a result of a failure to provide care or malpractice by the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to the findings of a new report authored by retiring Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).

The report, “Friendly Fire: Death, Delay, and Dismay at the VA,” complies the findings of a number of government and media investigation and concludes that many more veterans lost their lives as a result of VA negligence than the 23 deaths to which the department has admitted.

“The problems at the VA are worse than anyone imagined,” Coburn said.

“Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of VA malfeasance,” the senator added. “Poor management is costing the department billions of dollars more and compromising veterans’ access to medical care.”

Emphasis mine. This says more than 100 veterans died each year on average (which I would guess was low early on and has been rising in terms of actual deaths per year as more and more vets have been delayed medical assistance). How does that compare to Afghanistan and Iraq wars? Let’s see.

Per this DoD site the Afghan total KIA to date are 1816. If you average that over 13.5 years it comes to KIA 139 per year on average. That means abuse and neglect at the VA is almost as deadly as fighting in Afghanistan.  For the Iraq war 2010 to 2011 (operation New Dawn) under Obama the KIA is 38 over one year.  This means the death rate in Iraq was around one third that of the VA – clearly not good. Overall in Iraq the yearly rate was nearly 500/year, just to be clear.

It is truly sick how the Obama VA hid the truth of this scandal:

DeWenter alleged that at least seven times since October, she has noticed that the details of veterans’ deaths “were physically altered, or written over, by someone else” and those vets were relisted as living.

“The alterations had even occurred in recent weeks, she said, in a deliberate attempt to try to hide just how many veterans died while waiting for care, by trying to pretend dead veterans remain alive,” CNN reported.

DeWenter says that the changes were made in order to hide the fact that some veterans died while waiting for care:

“I would say (it was done to) hide the fact. Because it is marked a death. And that death needs to be reported. So if you change that to, ‘entered in error’ or, my personal favorite, ‘no longer necessary,’ that makes the death go away. So the death would never be reported then.”

“No longer necessary” – nice.

When you compare the VA’s mission statement to this abhorrent behavior (to gain bonuses no less) brings out the cruel starkness of this scandal. Heads should roll (and email collected now, before anymore computers have a “Lerner Failure”. There is no time to waste, since maybe 10 vets die to negligence of the VA each month.

Tags: Deaths, Obama, VA

Liberals and Green’s are obsessed with their fantasies concerning renewable energy, CO2, global warming, etc. It has become a religion so powerful that all evidence that these fantasies do not exist is duly ignored.

The act of obsessing  becomes critical when some fantasy gets in the way of responsible behavior. Even worse, when obsession blocks out so much else other people end up hurt. This happens because the obsession disables all other factors – such as compassion for others, concern for their well being, etc. Obsession can hit such intensities other people (and their needs) become inanimate barriers – things to be removed. Things that are no concern.

The obsession with green energy (and the commensurate need to be the hero who saves the planet) has blinded the left to not just the fact CO2 is not warming the Earth as they predicted (and in fact is lagging effect of warming, not a cause), but has also blinded them to the impacts on human beings caused by their obsession. It is not longer sufficient to ignore “The Pause” in temps as CO2 rises, to ignore the blatant statistical errors in the alarmists ‘science’ studies, to ignore the inability to support a modern society on unreliable renewable energy.

No, right now the left has kicked their “delusion mode” into high gear, where nothing on Earth is more important than they becoming heroes of the planet! Not even saving the life’s of sick US Veterans will get in their way:

The administrators at the Veterans Administration have apparently been busy while old soldiers waited to see a doctor, after all. Serving those who served is not necessarily a priority, but saving the planet is Job 1. Solar panels and windmills can be more important than the touch of a healing hand.

…

VA facilities have become littered with every scheme to banish carbon dioxide short of requiring visitors to hold their breath. Calverton National Cemetery spent $742,034 on solar panels. Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery spent $787,308. Not to be out-greened, the Riverside National Cemetery spent $1.3 million on its solar system.

At the Phoenix VA Health Care System, where 20 Americans died from incompetence and cover-up, the department spent $20 million putting solar panels on the hospital roofs. That would have been more than enough money to provide the veterans with the health

It is one thing to be a true believer for the cause. It is another to be so maniacal to commit criminal negligence to those you are responsible for. This is the Mission Statement for the VA:

To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise “To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” by serving and honoring the men and women who are America’s Veterans.

Obviously, those spending money on solar panels instead of seeing to our sick and dying veterans have failed in their duty. And they should be held accountable.

Scanning the headlines it is clear our federal government is pretty much dysfunctional in many, many  areas. For example, look at this list of our government at work:

• IRS “loses” emails over the critical period in Tea Party targeting investigation
• The Veterans Administration has been caught destroying evidence of its hiding the fact wait lines for veterans needing medical help are actually killing those in need.
• Our premature pull out in Iraq has resulted in terrorists being poised to take over that critical country
• Obamacare screw ups continue to plague the nation while making things worse in terms of enhancing medical care and costs
• The humanitarian mess on our borders
• Not to mention Libya, Benghazi, Afghanistan, Jobs, etc

But not to worry, DC was able to do get one thing done this week:

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the Washington Redskins trademark registration, calling the football team’s name “disparaging to Native Americans.”

The landmark case, which appeared before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, was filed on behalf of five Native Americans.

Out of all those millions of people being hurt or killed by the incompetence by our federal government, it is nice to see these 5 people where able to over turn the desires of thousands of Redskin fans.’

Just amazing

This one just had my jaw dropping.

But a little background first. The scientific method – before being broken and manipulated by the Global Warming Alarmists – was all about proving a theory against reality. If reality and the theoretica predictions did not match, the theory was proven to be wrong and tossed. Or, in other words:

The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory’s predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false. Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methods of obtaining knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses via predictions which can be derived from them. These steps must be repeatable to guard against mistake or confusion in any particular experimenter.

But basically, if the predictions of the theory fail – so does the theory.

We have been experiencing a nearly two decade pause in average global temperature anomalies at the same time atmospheric CO2 levels have continued to climb unabated. The theory of Global Warming is all about CO2 concentrations increasing temperature. But for the last 20 years reality has been proving this concept to be wrong.

So what can an alarmist do?  Well first on my list might be to admit the data used to pull the global warming alarm bell is “lousy” because it broke the theory:

Global average sea surface temperatures rose rapidly from the 1970s but have been relatively flat for the past 15 years. This has prompted speculation from some quarters that global warming has stalled.

Now, Stephen Briggs from the European Space Agency’s Directorate of Earth Observation says that sea surface temperature data is the worst indicator of global climate that can be used, describing it as “lousy”.

“It is like looking at the last hair on the tail of a dog and trying to decide what breed it is,” he said on Friday at the Royal Society in London.

Er…, WHAT? But it gets even better!

Scientists are now trying to simulate the behaviour using computer models. This is difficult because the behaviour of the deep ocean is too poorly known to be reliably included.

“The models don’t have the skill we thought they had. That’s the problem,” said Peter Jan van Leeuwen, director of the National Centre of Earth Observation at the University of Reading.

OK, now we have lousy data and misbehaving models of the climate.  I.e., Models that have no “skill” in reflecting nature but instead reflect something other than reality.

One has to wonder where this is all going to lead? Will the scientific method be salvaged and the clear and sane conclusion reached? Will we finally admit AGW has been DISPROVED in terms of the current data and models? Let’s see:

Christopher Merchant at the University of Reading has been working to understand why the increase in the stored energy has not translated into an increase in sea surface temperature.

“There are a number of contributions and a picture is emerging,” he says. Those contributions include the cooling effect of aerosols from Asian industrialisation, natural variability in the climate system and solar variability.

Seems like we may have! two of the three reasons for temperature not to be following the theory of AGW is NATURAL VARIABILITY!

Also known as – Mother Nature

President Obama’s tenure has been a roller coaster ride of Big Government, Big Promises and Big Failures. And the Big Failures are always followed by Big Lies on why the promise was never made in the first place, or the result is not that bad, or straw men should not deter us from our messianic role in history.

Actually, they are transparently dumb Big Lies. Lies only the sycophants would buy – and the rest of us just eye roll. The President always marches out his fantasy “straw man” army to cover his administration’s mistakes:

To be successful, a straw man argument requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument.

For the Big Government professional inside America’s Political Industrial Complex, their ignorance is more of the form of a unwavering devotion to government solutions at any and all levels of life. But we have been beaten senseless with straw man arguments by this President ever since he ran his first campaign. To the point our Lame Duck President has lost all credibility today – but why should he care?

Remember “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? How did that Big Promise go under Big Government

Or how about those “Shovel ready jobs” that took 3-4 years to show up and lasted on average a couple of months?

Recently we were fed by the administration this howler:

… if you had to choose any moment to be born in human history, not knowing what your position was going to be, who you were going to be, you’d choose this time. The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.

Brings back memories of this demigod-like delusional comment:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; …

Any other American uttering such nonsense would be sent off for medical help.

And let us not forget the Benghazi deaths, where four people – one a US Ambassador – were killed by a terrorist attack on an unsecured compound on the anniversary of 9-11. Big Government tried to claim it was all about a movie no one had ever heard about! And the sycophants swooned!

Now we know better:

In an interview with Clinton that aired last night on ABC News, anchor Diane Sawyer threw the ARB right back in the face of the former secretary of state. The two tangled over the preparedness of the U.S. diplomatic installation in Benghazi for a terrorist attack. In defending her work on this front, Clinton stressed that she had delegated the particulars of security to the experts in the field.

As far as any can tell, the sycophants are still swooning. Nothing seems to distract them from their fanciful dreams!

Why stop there? We have the meltdown in Iraq, we have the meltdown in Ukraine, we have the meltdown in Libya.  What a wonderful new peace President Obama’s Big Government has brought!

Here in the US, the EPA is promising to address global warming if we just fork over 240,000 jobs a year and $51 billion dollars in taxpayer money a year. They are committed (Big Promise Alert) to slowing the warming of the planet by …

– wait for it –

0.018°C in just 85 Years!

This is really interesting because the Big Lie here was a lie of omission by not exposing how little we will get from all this investment.

Another Big Lie came out this week which indicates the Obama administration is daring anyone and everyone to call him on his failures and his coverups. In what has to the Big Lie of the century, we get Obama’s version of the dog ate my homework:

More than a year after receiving a subpoena, the IRS says there’s a 28-month period where Lerner’s emails to and from people outside the IRS no longer exist

The agency blames a computer crash for the loss

OK, we now see what Obama meant by transparency. Lies so transparent only a Class A dupe will fall for them. For those not familiar with government computer systems, a crash of a single computer cannot wipe out the emails  – especially outgoing. By running to this Big Lie Obama just opened up the entire email cache of the IRS and White House to investigation.

Update: This why I know this is a Big Lie

Please explain why redundancies required for federal systems were either not used or were not effective in restoring the lost materials, and provide documentation showing how this shortfall has been remediated

2nd Update: Yep, this Big Lie will be exposed by Monday AM:

He notes “All email servers in a professional organization use TAPE backup. Meaning if all the above fails, you can restore the server using the TAPE backups.”

And from here:

When it is time to collect emails–something I do all the time in my law practice–you go to the email server and pull out the user’s entire account. A crash of the user’s computer is irrelevant and will not cause emails to be “lost.”

By Monday AM, the news media should be on this like Woodward and Bernstein – end update

All government computers are backed up. That means the people Learner sent emails to as well as her own computer. In addition, there are records of emails transmissions on intermediary servers. This is WHY federal employees have to use outside email addresses and services to keep things off the books. A single computer crash means nothing in the electronic record keeping (which brings us to another Big Lie from Obama’s Big Government)

If I was Congress, I would seize all computer backups at the IRS and White House ASAP and then search the emails. That way we can avoid any more straw man excuses!

Finally, the Big Government Lie about our borders and immigration:

Sent to members of Congress and staff by Rose Hacking, of the office of the assistant secretary of legislation at HHS, the invitation comes with the following commands:

• No recording devices will be allowed (We may ask you to leave your cellphone in our vehicle)
• No questions will be allowed during the tour, but questions will be addressed later
• No interacting with staff and children at the shelter
• We will provide photos of the facility after the tour

This is how you create the public ignorance that feeds the straw man army. You filter and censor reality. You dare not let the straw men lose their ignorance!

Obama has lost all self control. He no longer cares about checks and balances, rules and process, or even honesty and integrity. He is a Lame Duck and he is imploding in a fit of frustration and indifference. The pattern is clear now. There is always going to be a Big Lie to cover up the Big Government’s Big Failures until the man leaves office. And this will reflect frustration back on his party and his enablers (see Eric Cantor for an example).

Barack Obama just made Richard Nixon look like a saint! Now just watch the fall out.

This post is about jaw dropping arrogance from the Obama Administration, and what I fear is rampant ignorance and/or apathy now infecting American society. The arrogance is captured in the equation above, and comes from two recent posts on the EPA edicts on fighting global warming (i.e., controlling CO2 production).

First, this fact about these EPA edicts:

A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study calculates that the new regulations will cost our economy another $51 billion annually, result in 224,000 more lost jobs every year, and cost every American household $3,400 per year in higher prices for energy, food and other necessities. Poor, middle class and minority families – and those already dependent on unemployment and welfare – will be impacted worst. Those in a dozen states that depend on coal to generate 30-95% of their electricity will be hit especially hard.

So what do we get for all this pain and suffering?

This is what we will get as our return after 85 years of this madness:

But no worries.  What the EPA left out, we’ll fill in.

Using a simple, publically-available, climate model emulator called MAGICC that was in part developed through support of the EPA, we ran the numbers as to how much future temperature rise would be averted by a complete adoption and adherence to the EPA’s new carbon dioxide restrictions*.

The answer? Less than two one-hundredths of a degree Celsius by the year 2100.

0.018°C to be exact.

Wow!

Trillions of dollars ($4.335 Trillion) and millions of lost jobs (19 million) later we get what?

Does the Political Industrial Complex think we are that stupid we would buy this Snake Oil?

Worse – are we as a people so stupid we will buy this Snake Oil?

Does this compute or not?

(100,000’s of Jobs + Billions of Taxpayer $’s) x 85 years = 0.018° C

Think of what we could do with all that effort applied to something important and real.

Tags: CO2, EPA, Global Warming, Obama

It is really interesting watching the political dynamics this season. The Political Industrial Complex (Politicians and their staff, Political Consultants, Political News Media, Lobbyists, etc) has just been completely shocked today as the GOP House Majority Leader – Eric Cantor – lost his primary to an unknown Libertarian backed by Tea Party groups.

It wasn’t enough that Eric Cantor spent $1 million in the weeks leading up to the election, when his primary opponent hardly had $100,000 in his campaign coffers.

It didn’t matter that the House majority leader, 51, branded Dave Brat a liberal hack, and himself as the guardian of the Republican creed. On Tuesday night, Cantor, who was swept into the majority leader’s suite in a tea party wave, was swept out by the same movement.

…

It’s one of the most stunning losses in modern House politics, and completely upends the GOP hierarchy in both Virginia and Washington. Cantor enjoyed a meteoric rise that took him from chief deputy whip, to minority whip to majority leader in the span of 13 years.

Cantor was seen by many as the next speaker of the House, biding his time until Ohio Rep. John Boehner wanted to retire.

But now, Cantor has just six months left in Congress. He is the second incumbent to lose this primary season: 91-year-old Texas Rep. Ralph Hall was the first.

Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are no doubt smiling this morning. And Thad Cochran – the likely next old-guard GOP Pol to lose – should be seeing the writing on the wall for his primary.

The conventional wisdom says Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel has the advantage in the upcoming June 24 Senate runoff — and a new robopoll of likely GOP runoff voters from the group Strategic National feeds that CW by finding the GOP challenger with a 6-point lead. McDaniel takes 52 percent in the poll, with GOP incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran at 46 percent.

So why is this happening? Why all of sudden a sea change in attitude?

I don’t think the attitude has changed that much – voters are fed up with DC and its incompetence and reckless spending. I think the intensity has ramped up. The GOP has never really paid serious attention to the “small government” libertarians who are simply normal (and flawed) Americans demanding government get reigned in and stop playing to the power and money in this country. Big Business and Big Government are in the cross hairs of Main Street. And in case the elites missed the math – the 5% running this country into the ground are seriously outnumbered by the rest of us who keep it working. Despite nonsensical and silly government interventions and edicts.

What is firing up the Tea Party voters to create an even bigger anti-incumbent wave than that seen in 2010? It is our lame duck President!

Obama has apparently lost his patience with the rules and processes of government. His last major push – Obamacare – was run through on an insane partisan vote. And when fixes were proposed he claimed it was the law of the land, only to run amok making changes when his signature legislation’s implementation showed up the faults and errors found in government run political agendas. Obamacare has been changed in 100’s of risky and panic-driven ways to protect it from bad press. Which means it is being chewed alive with emergency bandaid fixes instead. It is a terminal mess, costing everyone on many fronts.

Update: Right on cue I read this assessment of Obamacare today:

Yet since premium growth has averaged at least 5% over the past five years, it is unlikely the law’s federal subsidies will increase enough to make up the difference in out-of-pocket premium costs. As this happens, lower- and even middle-income consumers will be forced out of the private insurance market. As my colleague at the Medical Industry Leadership Institute, Michael Ramlet, and I show in a paper published last month, the law’s structural problems will take years to fully manifest.

The average premium for an individual exchange health plan (Silver) will increase by $1,375 by 2019 while the average family premium for the same plan will increase by $4,198—outpacing the average increases from 2008 to 2013. Consumers who saw spikes in their health premiums last year will experience the same trauma this year. But the steepest price increases will not occur.

And this is the p0litical climate the Democrats and Establishment GOP will be facing the rest of THIS DECADE! – end update

But that is just the start. Now we have completely crazy EPAs edicts built on propaganda trying to claim to be ‘science’:

A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study calculates that the new regulations will cost our economy another $51 billion annually, result in 224,000 more lost jobs every year, and cost every American household $3,400 per year in higher prices for energy, food and other necessities. Poor, middle class and minority families – and those already dependent on unemployment and welfare – will be impacted worst. Those in a dozen states that depend on coal to generate 30-95% of their electricity will be hit especially hard.
…

How many people will die in order to reduce world temperatures by possibly, maybe, something a lot less than 0.05 F?

This is good government? All that pain and suffering for a temperature change NO HUMAN on the planet could even detect?

Obama’s administration is pushing this through against numerous rules and regulations on how to vet the ‘science’ behind such stupendous stupidity. He is tired of waiting.

Recently ‘His Petulantcy” decided now was the time to change the face of America forever. Realizing he was going to lose Congress and become null and void this election cycle, President Obama has opened our borders and invited in a mass of humanity that basically just want free stuff:

Children are walking hundreds of miles across a hostile environment with little more than the clothes on their backs, accompanied by neither a parent nor other responsible adult. The numbers of these children making the treacherous journey are much higher than the Obama administration has acknowledged, according to reporting by our Stephen Dinan. The deputy Border Patrol chief, Ronald Vitiello, said in an internal memo on May 30 that border agents caught 40,000 unaccompanied children last year. They expect to apprehend 90,000 children this year, and 142,000 in 2015.

Americans are a kind and generous people, and photographs of a sea of small, frightened and hungry faces in U.S. shelters along the southern border are enough to break a million hearts. President Obama, whatever he intended, is largely responsible. Lured by lax immigration enforcement and the promise of citizenship as “dreamers,” the Obama children’s hour is changing the mission at the border from ensuring security to providing emergency assistance. Last week, the president declared the border an “urgent humanitarian situation.” He assigned the handling of the influx of children to Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which customarily provides relief following natural disasters. This is a disaster, sure enough, but it’s a man-made disaster.

Obama has basically lost his patience with the checks and balances of government, and seems to also to have lost his mind. He is going to push the envelope has much as he can by executive edict. In many directions. He will force the liberal fantasy on America come hell or high water.

But this will in turn force the liberal fantasies to deal with reality. Something they just are not going to be able to survive. Just like Obama showed with Obamacare, government cures are almost always worse than the problem they were intended to fix. Most problems are best fixed at the individual or community level. But in the minds of the Political Industrial Complex, only Big Government and Big Business are able to do good, the rest of us are just too damn ignorant to do for ourselves. We need to be fixed (and controlled and billed for the service).

And it is this arrogance from DC that felled Cantor:

Brat, who admits that he has supported several Cantor candidacies over the years, says he mounted his improbable primary campaign because the House GOP’s No. 2 leader has lost touch with his constituents, “veering from the Republican creed.”

“Years ago he had a good conservative track record, but now he’s veered off,” Brat told ABC News during an interview on Capitol Hill in May. “If you go to Heritage and look at their score, I think he’s at about a 53 right now. I mean, that’s an F-minus.”

..

Brat complained that Cantor, 50, has a “crony-capitalist mentality” to take care of the corporate sector ahead of the interests of small businesses.

“On the conservative scorecard, on the free market votes, he’s doing everything wrong,” Brat said. “He’s not following what folks in his district want him to do and it’s hurting the country.”

Brat calls himself as a “free market guy,” and says he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He also pledged never to increase taxes and to stick to a five-year promise not to vote to increase the debt limit.

This kind of political agenda scares the devil out of DC’s Political Industrial Complex. They know it means leaner times for them, less power and prestige. And that is why they try to undermine Tea Party backed candidates. It is why the GOP talks a lot, but in the end caves on shrinking government. And that is why there will be massive losses to the Democrats (the party of big government) and surprise losses to the GOP (because they cave too much).

To me this is just a sign of how big the 2014 voter insurgency wave is going to be. Does anyone really think Democrats are going to be safe this year when this is what Red States and Red Districts do to the GOP? The polls going into this race had Cantor way up, but as Ed Morrissey notes – only one poll really counts:

The axiom is so often used to explain away accurate but embarrassing poll results that it sounds too cliché to use it in most cases, but it’s true — the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day. Eric Cantor proved that last night, much to his chagrin, after his campaign bragged last week about an internal poll showing him up 34 points against his primary challenger, Dave Brat. Despite being outspent 25:1 in the primary — that’s not a typo, but twenty-five to one — Brat prevailed by beating Cantor by eleven points in an unusually high turnout.

…

Also, it should be noted that turnout in this primary was actually higher than those earlier primaries that nominated Cantor (almost 20,000 more than in 2012) and were supposedly more representative — and that Cantor got fewer votes this time than in his last primary. In fact, Cantor’s pollster relied on those dynamics to explain how he got the race wrong by about 45 points in the gap:

Obama has decided it is time for Government to run amok and act outside the rules. And it is his actions that will create the backlash that takes out the entrenched power in DC. Because now we see how bad it can get when the wrong people get hold of power they should never have had (or need to have) in the first place. Democrats should be shaking in their boots, because they are going to take the brunt of this come November.

Update: This event needs some context  to explain why I think this is a harbinger:

The establishment has a difficult time analyzing and adapting to such ground shifting events. And make no mistake: Eric Cantor’s defeat was earth shattering.  He becomes the first Majority leader ever to lose a primary race.  EVER.  And he is the highest ranking party member to lose a primary race since 1899.

Yeah, it is that big of a deal

Update: I think the message is finally starting to sink in:

Americans see a grim future for themselves, their children and their country.  They believe their political leaders are selfish, greedy and short-sighted – unable and/or unwilling to shield most people from wrenching economic and social change. For many, the Republican Party is becoming too extreme, while the Democratic Party – specifically President Obama – raised and dashed their hopes for true reform.

…

An American Party – what does that mean? For months, I’ve heard that phrase or similar anti-establishment sentiment from voters in Michigan, Arkansas, South Carolina and elsewhere – whites and non-whites; voters who are poor and rich and from the shrinking middle-class; Democrats, Republicans and independents. “We need American leaders, not Republican and Democratic leaders,” a construction workers in Little Rock, Ark., told me last month. Down the street from Penn’s Table, barber Stefanos Bouikidis held scissors in his right hand while throwing both hands in the air. “How are things going to change with corporate America running everything?”

…

But what may be in the air is a peaceful populist revolt – a bottom-up, tech-fueled assault on 20^th century political institutions. In a memo to his fellow Democrats, former Clinton White House political director Doug Sosnik writes persuasively about “an increasing populist push” across the political spectrum

…

Which side of the barricade are you on? Populists from the right and the left – from the tea party and libertarian-leaning Rand Paul to economic populist Elizabeth Warren – are positioning themselves among the insurgents.

…

Let this be the lesson taken from Cantor’s loss. He is not the only political leader to lose touch with voters. In fact, according to every indication, the entire political class has lost touch. There is ample polling to suggest that a majority of Americans voters don’t feel rooted in – or represented by – either the Republican or Democratic parties. Change or lose power, folks.

Ya think? Keep screwing up, wasting money and hurting our chance for a decent life – and expect reelection???

Tags: Cantor, Congress, GOP, Illegal Immigration, Obama, Tea Party

People who thought it was ridiculous that health care rationing would be a core part of Obamacare (and thus the instantiation of the “Death Panel” monicker) probably were the same dupes to think Obamacare would let you keep your doctor, keep your insurance, lower your cost and expand coverage.

And of course these same gullible people also probably thought that doing the website for the Democrats’ crazy scheme would be a cake-walk for the Feds.

Thankfully, Obamacare (and the VA scandals which expose the future of government run healthcare for all Americans) is finally waking people up to the reality behind the years of Obamacare hype and propaganda. The epic failures in both these areas is beginning to sift the dupes from those able to think without a media-driven safety net. Reality is hitting liberal fantasy.

The stories of real Americans with real needs who were covered prior to Obamacare are stacking up like chord wood.

Major Update: Death Panels have been around the VA for years it seems:

Most doctors have their personal VA stories. In my experience at VA hospitals in San Antonio and San Diego, patients were seen in clinics that were understaffed and overscheduled. Appointments for X-rays and other tests had to be scheduled months in advance, and longer for surgery. Hospital administrators limited operating time, making sure that work stopped by 3 p.m. Consequently, the physician in charge kept a list of patients who needed surgery and rationed the available slots to those with the most urgent problems.

Scott Barbour, an orthopedic surgeon and a friend, trained at the Miami VA hospital. In an attempt to get more patients onto the operating-room schedule, he enlisted fellow residents to clean the operating rooms between cases and transport patients from their rooms into the surgical suites. Instead of offering praise for their industriousness, the chief of surgery reprimanded the doctors and put a stop to their actions. From his perspective, they were not solving a problem but were making federal workers look bad, and creating more work for others, like nurses, who had to take care of more post-op patients.

End Update

For example:

A Sonoma County man battling more than a dozen tumors in his body is fighting a new battle with his insurance carrier, who has denied coverage for his treatments.

Jeffrey Rusch of Camp Meeker knew the news was bad when an MRI found 20 tumors in his brain. Two days later, a C-T scan at Sutter medical center in Santa Rosa brought another devastating blow, discovering a large tumor in his lungs, and more in his liver and bones.

…

The family received a letter from the insurance provider, saying his hospital stay didn’t meet the criteria for medical necessity.

“It’s like an attack on my family. It feels that way,” Rusch said.

Jeffrey and Zoe have been Anthem members since 2008, and estimate they’ve paid $100-thousand in premiums.

“I would call saving my husband’s life medically necessary,” Zoe said.

That is why the monicker “death panel” was spot on  for what is coming thanks to government run healthcare.

Example 2:

Guam – There is an ongoing crisis within the dialysis community. At least one local medical transport company has been forced to cease services for dialysis patients because the claims contractor for Medicare, Noridian Healthcare Solutions, is refusing to reimburse Medicare claims unless patients are on a ventilator.

The changes have caused mass layoffs and now the Guam Fire Department may be affected too.

On May 12, after four years of medical transport coverage, dialysis patient Rodney Calimlim was informed by Guam Medical Transport that he would no longer be able to utilize transport services to and from dialysis. GMT General Manager Jared Ada says it was an awfully tough decision to make.

Example 3:

Some consumers who bought insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law are experiencing buyer’s remorse after realizing that their longtime doctors aren’t accepting the new plans.

Before the law took effect, experts warned that narrow networks could impact patients’ access to care, especially in cheaper plans. But with insurance cards now in hand, consumers are finding their access limited across all price ranges — sometimes even after they were told their plan would include their current doctor.

Michelle Pool is one of those customers. Before enrolling in a new health plan on California’s exchange, she checked whether her longtime primary care doctor was covered. Pool, a 60-year-old diabetic who has had back surgery and a hip replacement, purchased the plan only to find that the insurer was mistaken.

Example 4:

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlights how two related entities authorized by the Obama health care law – the Independent Payment Advisory Board and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation — both have the power to ration care. This April 23 op-ed by Lanhee J. Chen and James C. Capretta adds to the documentation provided by NRLC demonstrating that rationing of health care is built into the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

…

What happens to doctors who violate a “quality” standard by prescribing more lifesaving medical treatment than it permits? They will be prevented from contracting with any of the health insurance plans “qualified” under the Obama Health Care Law. Few doctors would be able to remain in practice if subjected to that penalty.

This means that a treatment a doctor and patient deem advisable to save that patient’s life or preserve or improve the patient’s health–but which exceeds the standard imposed by the government–will be denied even if the patient is willing and able to pay for it.

Example 5:

Because no one should go broke in America because they get sick. Insurance companies will be required to cover with no extra charge, routine check ups and preventive care like mammogram’s and colonoscopies,  because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching things like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse.” Says the President.

It was promises like those and a move to Durant to take care of her aging mother, that led Janet Grigg to the healthcare marketplace. Although, what she says she has found, is something the cancer survivor says, is hard to believe. Grigg, who is  a colon cancer survivor says she went online to the marketplace, put in her personal information and picked a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan. Then, went to the doctor for her annual cancer screenings.

“And when I got there, they had said to me, that the card would not be accepted. That they had, in fact received a memo. And I was like ,really, I just saw the doctor two weeks ago.” Grigg explains, after her second visit to University Medical Group in Durant.

That visit is also where Grigg says billing employee’s told her the previous visit would have to be paid for out of pocket, as well as, any future visits to the facility. But she says that’s not the most surprising thing she found.

“That I would not find a doctor within a 400 mile radius from Dallas up to Oklahoma City that would in fact take the plan that I had chosen.

Example 6:

The private insurance companies that sell policies on the insurance exchanges set up under the ACA are embracing this shift to the leaner and meaner networks, and telling customers that they need to shed their dependence on “lavish” health plans and wake up to the new reality.

“We have to break people away from the choice habit that everyone has,” Marcus Merz, CEO of PreferredOne, an insurer in Golden Valley, Minnesota, told the New York Times. “We’re all trying to break away from this fixation on open access and broad networks.” Mr. Merz and PreferredOne stand to profit handsomely from the cost-savings from shrinking networks, as the insurer has grabbed about 60 percent of the market on the Minnesota Obamacare exchange.

Insurance companies have long sought to restrict patient choices in provider networks, and Obamacare is proving to be the vehicle to make it happen.

…

The size of the Obamacare networks vary from state to state, but many of them exclude at least some large hospitals or doctors’ groups. In New Hampshire, for example, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield is the only insurer offered on the exchange, and Anthem has excluded 10 hospitals in the state from its network.

…

An Associated Press survey found that only four of the nation’s 19 top comprehensive cancer centers are included in the Obamacare networks in the states where they are located. In Washington, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance is not covered by the networks of five of the eight insurance companies participating in the state’s exchange. MD Anderson Cancer Center reported that it was included in less than half of the Houston-area exchange plans.

In New York, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is only fully covered by two of nine New York City insurers. While in Buffalo, the Roswell Park Cancer Institute is only covered by five of the 16 statewide insurance plans.

Example 7:

In Nevada, the recently filed lawsuit alleges that numerous state residents have been going uncovered despite enrolling and paying for insurance.

The lawsuit says that one plaintiff, Larry Basich, had a heart attack at the end of last year and required costly surgery on Jan. 3 – in theory the third day of his new insurance. But the legal complaint says his payment wasn’t processed properly, leaving Mr. Basich stuck with more than $400,000 in bills.

…

The plight of Margaret Figueroa in New York State garnered news headlines this month as the Staten Island resident told of losing access to specialized doctors and treatments for her chronic condition. For now, her former doctor has offered pro bono care while she seeks a longer-term answer. The physician said “there are a lot of patients falling through the cracks,” according to a news article on the Staten Island Advance website.

Each of these, and the 1000’s more out there, are a powerful political add that will resonate with a public experiencing the reality that is Obamacare. And no amount of fanciful political spin can remove those experiences and these stories from the American psyche. Which will explode in November.

HotAir notes the coming fun for employer based healthcare:

More employees are getting hit with higher health insurance premiums and co-payments, and many don’t have the money to cover unexpected medical expenses, a new report finds.

More than half of companies (56%) increased employees’ share of health care premiums or co-payments for doctors’ visits in 2013, and 59% of employers say they intend to do the same in 2014, according to the annual Aflac WorkForces Report. It’s based on a survey of 1,856 employers and 5,209 employees at small, medium and large-size companies.

DC sticking it do the little guy while their political allies rake in the profits.  Always the same old story.

Tags: Cancer, Coverage, Narrow Network, Obamacare

 

 

In my last post over a month ago (sorry, just have not been feeling the blogger fever recently) I predicted the foolish act The Obama administration made in cancelling all American human launch vehicles (Shuttles and the follow-on Constellation Program) would lead to us being blackmailed by Russia – the only country capable of sending and retrieving astronaut from our Low Earth Orbiting Space Station (ISS):

This is as dumb a move as I have ever seen. If this escalates Russia will maroon our people in space. Or it can just bring everyone back and leave our investment orbiting above our heads out of reach. Stopping emails from Russia to NASA counterparts? Really – that’s their plan?

There are times I hate being right – and this is one of those times:

Russia is to deny the US future use of the International Space Station beyond 2020 and will also bar its rocket engines from launching US military satellites as it hits back at American sanctions imposed over Ukraine crisis.

Russia’s deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin announced a series of punitive measures on Tuesday against the US in response to sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crimea.

The two countries have long cooperated closely on space exploration despite their clashes in foreign policy.

The Space Station is manned by both American and Russian crew, but the only way to reach it is by using Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.