Insanity

            When are the people going to rise up and say Enough to government intrusion into our lives?  When ?

            I can understand that seat belts save lives.  OK.  So do air bags.  Every new car has them, and we all take them for granted now.  But our federal government isn't about to stop there.  It is now looking at mandating rear-view cameras in all new cars.  The cost is estimated to be between $1.9 and $2.7 billion a year.  Next will be blind spot detection mirrors, and then maybe night vision technology.  What else will government think up to protect us from ourselves?
            The Los Angeles City Council has approved a bill banning single-use plastic bags, the kind every supermarket uses to bag groceries.  They're bad for the environment, say the wise men sitting in the shade of the Tree of Knowledge.  Find something else to line your trash baskets or to pick up your dog's poop.  Not to worry.  Once this goes into effect you will still be able to get your groceries in a paper bag...at 10 cents apiece.
            New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants all the citizens in his domain to be vigorous and healthy.  Remember, he's the guy who banned smoking everywhere but in your double-locked bathroom, directed restaurants to warn us about the evils of salt and trans fats, and outlawed big gulp drinks.  Well, he's at it again.  Now he has gotten the compliant City Council to mandate composting.  New Yorkers will have to save their chicken bones and banana peels (without the paper stickers, of course) for compost pick-up trucks.  If there's no compostable material at your curb, you get fined.  Is there nothing to stop this little tyrant from telling the citizens of New York how to live their lives?
            On the national level I can't wait to see how many healthy young people will line up to buy health insurance at $8,000 a pop mandated by Obamacare.   The government is hiring 17,000 new IRS agents to make sure that they do.  That is, when they're not busy harassing taxpayers who believe in patriotism.
            The trillion dollar farm bill, 80% of which is for food stamps, was defeated in the House of Representatives on June 20th.  You would think that the Republican majority gunned it down because it was too costly.  Some 62 Republicans actually did vote No for that reason.  But 172 Democrats voted No, almost three times as many as Republicans... because they didn't think the bill called for enough spending.
            Politicians at every level are calling for more spending, more taxes, more regulations, and still more mandates that tell us what we can and can't do.  Is it any wonder their favorability ratings are in the toilet?
            This insanity has got to stop!

The Royal Trough

            I'm not the only one who has accused the Obamas of living like royalty at the expense of the American taxpayer.  Mark Alexander is the latest to express his scorn for the first family's self-indulgent life-style.  In a June 20th article, he refers to them as "the fattest cats of all," adding,"...much like their record accumulation of national debt, their unmitigated arrogance and bloated hypocrisy exceeds all that of previous executive administrations combined." I couldn't have said it better.

            By now we are all familiar with the extravagant vacations the Obamas have taken every year to places like Hawaii, Martha's Vineyard, and Vail.  But this year they are behaving less like fat cats and more like hogs shoving their flat-nosed snouts into the public trough. 
            Her porcine majesty Michelle Obama is even worse than her perpetually fund-raising husband.  Remember the safari to South Africa, the jaunt to Spain, the ski trip to Aspen while her husband was golfing with Tiger Woods?  She has been called a junket junkie whose travels, all with a full entourage, has cost taxpayers, by some estimates, as much as $10 million over the last four years.
            As profligate as these excursions were, they pale in comparison with her expenditures in Ireland earlier this month.  Now, we can understand the first lady wanting to ride along on her husband's wasteful and fruitless trip to Copenhagen to lobby for a Chicago Olympics or to accompanying him on state visits to Europe and Asia.  But is there any absolution possible for requisitioning Air Force Two to follow Air Force One to Northern Ireland for June's G-8 Summit, so that she could take a two-day side trip to party in Dublin and to check the Book of Kells in search of a distant ancestor?  Where was the necessity for housing her 30-member retinue in a five-star hotel in which she took a $3,300 a night suite for herself and her daughters?
            This one little side trip cost U.S. taxpayers...Get this!... $5.1 million!  And what did the sycophants in the media have to say about this?  Typically, the disgusting Huffington Post gushed about her wardrobe, the "...awesome printed Lela Rose vest and on-trend Burberry trench coat and a covetable utility jacket."
            But there's more, a lot more.  After Ireland the royal family takes itself on a heritage tour to Africa that the Washington Post, not exactly a Right Wing newspaper, estimates will cost $100 million.  USAF cargo planes airlifting 14 limousines and 42 support vehicles, helicopters for the largest security detail ever, fighter jets over-flying the royal presence, Navy ships offshore in case of emergencies, all this and more to serve and protect the monarchs on their tour of ancestral lands.
            That's not just shoving your snout in the trough, it's jumping in bodily.
            What about the Sequester back home?  As Marie Antoinette famously said about the starving peasants, "Let 'em eat cake."

Too Little, Too Late

            President Obama's move to help the rebels in Syria is pathetic.  After drawing a red line on Syria's use of chemical weapons, he dithered for months, even as French and British allies shoved the proof he needed under his nose.  When he finally caved in and decided to send arms to the rebels, he didn't even have the guts to announce it himself; he left that to a deputy something or other.  This is what masquerades as leadership in the White House.

            Obama's decision is pathetic for another reason.  If he was going to step into the conflict to get rid of Assad, he should have done it long ago.  In the early stages of the rebellion, the rebels consisted of unorganized groups of fighters.  They were moderate, democratically leaning  Sunnis who wanted nothing more than to oust the oppressive and murderous Syrian regime.  Their weapons came mostly from raids on government units, although we now know from Benghazi revelations that we were secretly funneling  small arms to them from Libya. 
            Then things began to change.  More rebel groups joined the fray.  But these were not moderate or pro-democracy.  They were radical Islamists aided by Sunnis from Iraq and funded by Saudi Arabia.  Their aim was to establish a religious regime governed by Sharia law.  The underfunded and fragmented moderates were no match for the Islamists who gradually took charge of the rebellion.   
            The conflict exploded when Russia and Shi'ite Iran joined the fray by supplying Assad with heavy weapons.  Tanks, planes, and artillery were too much for the rebels.  They began to fall back.  That's when Obama decided to send in military aid.  But to which rebels?  How can Obama be sure that our arms will go to what's left of the moderates and not to Islamists and al Qaida fighters who are our avowed enemies?   He can't.  It's too little, too late. 
            If President Obama wants to make a difference in Syria now, he has to go all in.  But he can't do that without bringing Israel and our European allies into the conflict and without challenging the Russians and Iranians who have too much invested in Syria to back out now.   We'd be looking at World War III.  It's just not going to happen.  What will happen and is happening right now is a total loss of United States influence in the region. 
            We were once the world's only superpower.  We aren't anymore, thanks to Barack Obama's timorous and impotent foreign policy.  I find that pathetic.

             

IRS Redux

            The IRS scandal is the gift that keeps on giving.  Some have called it manna from heaven for Republicans.  The latest well-known substance to hit the fan is the $70 million in bonuses that will be paid to IRS employees, yes, the very same IRS people who violated the constitutional rights of conservatives under the direction of their bosses in Washington and with the encouragement of Democrats in the Senate and the White House.  Why should these miscreants be rewarded?

            We have every reason to protest.   But there's nothing we can do about it, because the payments  are mandated by an agreement between the government and the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) that represents IRS employees.    
            Is there a connection here?  Let's see.  Since 2008, the year Barack Obama was anointed,  the NTEU has made $1.63 million in political contributions.  Bear in mind that this money comes from government employees whose salaries are paid by our taxes.  They are supposed to be impartial and fair... like the IRS.  But 96% of NTEU contributions go to Democrats.  Talk about an incestuous relationship!
            What can we do about it?  Not much.  But here's my wish list anyway.

            1.  De-certify the union.  FDR warned us about the negative consequences of letting public employees form unions.  Now we see why. 

            2.  Bring on a Special Prosecutor.  Because of the NTEU, it's almost impossible to fire anybody in the IRS.  But if IRS operatives have committed criminal acts, they should be prosecuted and sent to jail.

            3.  Reduce the budget.  The House controls the purse-strings.  It can start by cutting the $70 million allotted to bonuses and the $50 million for junkets and conferences featuring line dancing and Star Trek spoofs.

            4.  Keep the IRS out of Health Care.  The president wants to add 17,000 people to the IRS rolls to enforce compliance with Obamacare.  The Inquisition doesn't have enough power?

            5.  Abolish the IRS.  It's high time we took a good look at alternatives like the FairTax.  The government now taxes production, be it in the form of manufacturing or labor.  In my view, we would all be better off if it taxed consumption instead. 

            I would pay to be part of the crowd waving good-bye to the IRS as it set off on its final one-way junket. 

Dirty Laundry

            In a very significant way, Elijah Cummings has become the voice of his party on the IRS scandal.  The top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee disputes the charge that Washington initiated the targeting of tea-party groups.  It's time to move on, he says.  There's no evidence that Treasury  or Justice are involved. 

            Not so fast, Congressman.  The inquiry into IRS malfeasance has only just begun.  Speaking directly to Cummings and, by extension, to all Democrats in Congress,  Chairman Issa said, "Your participation is generally limited to obstructing or criticizing the process." Indeed, responsibility for this scandal can be found not only in the IRS chain of command, but under the Capitol Dome and in the White House.
            The tone was set by President Obama himself when he attacked conservative groups relentlessly during his re-election campaign.  He called them a threat to democracy, even suggesting that foreign-controlled corporations might be involved.  Obama senior advisor David Axelrod said flat out that "benign-sounding" organizations were front groups for foreign-controlled companies.  Obama called them "shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names...people with something to hide."  What better way was there to find out what they were hiding than by looking into their taxes?  The IRS took the hint.
            Not to be outdone, Democrats in the Senate grabbed the ball and ran with it.  Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to the IRS and demanded it investigate non-profits; his letter named only conservative organizations.  Dick Durbin demanded the IRS investigate the tax-exempt status of Crossroads GPS, a fund-raising organization led by Karl Rove; even after the IRS scandal broke, Durbin was unapologetic for his brazen act of political targeting.  Senators Bennet, Franken, Merkley, Schumer, Shaheen, Udall, and Whitehouse piled on by telling the IRS to give extra scrutiny to 501C4 organizations to find any evidence of wrongdoing; their purpose clearly was to prevent conservative groups from raising money.
            Will we be surprised when congressional investigations establish the culpability of IRS operatives like Doug Shulman and Lois Lerner?  What the IRS did was unconstitutional and criminal.  So what?  They were just doing the bidding  of their masters in the White House and Congress.  
            So, why wouldn't Elijah Cummings say it's time to move on?  After all, what Democrat would want his party's moral depravity to be exposed like a bordello's dirty laundry?

           

Why Obamacare Is Bad for America

This is from an e-mail sent to me by my son Marc. I didn't think I could improve on it.

 

While I'm sure there is no shortage of topics you could write about in your next blog, I would suggest comment on the recent case of little Sarah Murnaghan who is dying of cystic fibrosis while she waits for a lung transplant. I actually lost sleep over this story last night and woke up thinking about it.

Without getting into the medical merits of the case, it's a perfect example of how to apply the Dali Lama's rule #5 on living your life - "Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly." This would be excellent advice for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in light of her refusal to intervene despite pleas from the girls parents and members of Congress. To me this is the quintessential example of why Obamacare or Government-run health care is a bad thing. Here we have a Washington bureaucrat failing to be proactive in trying to save a life when she could do so with the stroke of a pen, but instead refused. What was she thinking? Sarah's doctors say she has a good chance of survival with a transplanted adult lung, and here we have the Secretary of HHS putting policy enforcement at a higher priority than medical need. I don't get it.

Thank God Sarah's parents found a judge who actually has some common sense and ordered HHS to suspend enforcement of the age rule.

What does this have to do with Obamacare?  Simple. Wwe've just seen how federal bureaucrats do not always put the patient first when their decision making could have a direct impact on a patient's survival. This is an example of government weighing in on who gets treatment and who is denied treatment. If that's not a chilling thought, I don't know what is. As frustrating as it is, I've seen this sort of thing time and time again in the military where people in decision-making positions can't look beyond policy guidelines to make common sense decisions in matters that fall into gray areas. That's where judgment comes into play. That's what these officials are really paid to do. Any person with half a brain can point to a rule in a book and say their hands are tied. I say Bullshit! What ever happened to judgment and the courage to do the right thing? And in this case, when someone's life is on the line?

Is this what we can expect with Obamacare, where the state has the final say in who receives medical treatment and who does not? Who's next? A cancer patient being denied a liver transplant because he's already Stage 4? Or a senior citizen being denied a lung transplant because he's too old? To me, it ranks right up there with the progressive mindset that terminating an unwanted pregnancy is a matter of personal choice because that's what the law says.

The fact is, in the future this type of insensitive bureaucratic decision-making will certainly squash the hopes of other patients fighting for their lives. This is what we can expect with Obamacare. This is why government-run healthcare is bad for America.

Scared to Death

             What we have seen so far in Washington's triple scandals (quadruple, if we include Sibelius's shakedown of insurance execs to fund Obamacare) is a concerted effort to shield President Obama from any culpability. He didn't know, he wasn't involved, he wasn't told, etc. Former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman visited the White House 157 times, but not once, if you can believe it, did he speak to the president about targeting conservative groups.  Bill O'Reilly is tearing out the little hair he has left over that one.

            Democratic defenders seem confident that if anyone is going to take a hit, it's the underlings in the IRS and in the Justice and State departments.  Maybe Eric Holder's perjury will cost him his job, they say, but the president's hands are clean on that one.  But there's one scandal where the president's hands may be filthy dirty. It's the one scandal feared most by the Administration.  Benghazi.
            So far we know that right after Ambassador Stevens was killed, the president met with his security advisors.  All of them knew at that time that they were looking at a planned, terrorist attack. We know that he talked to Defense Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey about deploying troops in response to the attack.  We also know that this was the last time he talked to them that day.  Panetta testified that he then ordered anti-terrorism units in Rota, Spain, and special ops forces in Central Europe to get ready to deploy to Libya.  But they never got off the ground. Why? 
            Charles Krauthammer thinks the answer may lie in finding out where President Obama was in the hours following the attack that killed Ambassador Stevens.  We know that he met with Secretary Clinton to concoct a story about an anti-Islam video, but that's not the important point here.  Krauthammer comes close to the real story when he says that the president never talked to Panetta or Dempsey the rest of that day and night.  Why is that important?  The answer, I think, is contained in a three-letter acronym: CBA, which stands for Cross Border Authority.
            According to my sources, which include three independent military officers, U.S. forces need explicit orders from the president to cross over international borders on a hostile mission. That's why, for instance, Navy Seals needed and received a direct order from the president to cross into Pakistan to kill bin Laden.  Panetta and Dempsey were ordered to deploy troops, i.e., get them into position. But they never got the order to go to Benghazi.  They never had CBA, because the only person who could have given it to them was President Obama.  And he didn't.
            We can only speculate as to the reason the president decided not send troops into Benghazi to rescue Americans under siege.  Panetta tried to excuse Obama's inaction by saying that the troops were too far away (we had a Special Ops team in Sicily ready to go and only two hours away), that they could not have gotten there on time (How could he have known how long the attacks would last?), and that "The U.S. military doesn't do risky things." And this from the Secretary of Defense? What a disgrace!
            If the simple fact that the military lacked CBA can be established by following the "Stand Down" order up the chain of command, it would put the blame for our failure to rescue dying Americans in Benghazi squarely on President Obama. Regardless of his reasons for not giving CBA to the military, such cowardice, in my view, amounts to a violation of the president's oath of office to protect America from its enemies.  Worse, if he did it for political reasons consistent with the video falsehood, it would be unforgivable.
            That's why the White House is scared to death of Benghazi.