Mad Dog Surrender

HAPPY VETERANS DAY TO OUR BRAVE TROOPS - PAST AND PRESENT.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE.


No Pay
Up to seven million people may be able to get health policies without paying any premium at all. (NYT editorial, 11/10/2013)

This news has the editors at the Times just giddy with excitement - more people getting things from the government for free. It is, they believe, the way the world should work. 

Do the Math
For instance, a family of four making $59,000 a year could face a choice between a $387 penalty the first year or, in a typical “silver” or midpriced policy offered on the California exchange, a premium of nearly $4,800 after the federal subsidy, with a $4,000 deductible, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation subsidy calculator. There is variation from plan to plan, but the deductible typically would not apply to doctor visits, preventive care, lab tests or generic drugs, although some regular co-payments would apply. (NYT, 11/11/2013)

So for the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the items in the last sentence above cancel out. Ergo, a family of four making 59k would have to incur OVER $700 PER MONTH of medical expenses before it would have made sense for them to have insurance. 

A smart consumer would pay the $387 penalty. If a family member gets sick, they can apply for insurance then. Remember: You cannot be turned down because of a pre-existing condition!!!


Exceedingly
A study set for publication in the December issue of Pediatrics confirms what some of Hollywood’s sharpest critics have suspected: The level of gun violence in the top-selling PG-13 movies has been rising, and it now exceeds that in the most popular R-rated films. (NYT, 11/11/2013)

Here's a question. In light of this study, will the U.S. political party that has received hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars from Hollywood now act to sanction the film industry? Will Hollywood executives be called to testify before Congress?

You know the answer. 

And the next time that there is a mass shooting, that same political party will decry the Second Amendment. 

The Essence

Fossilized
Officials said Mr. Obama will present the proposal as part of his “all-of-the-above energy strategy,” which includes an increase in oil and gas development; support for nonpolluting sources like wind, solar and geothermal energy; loan guarantees for new nuclear plants; and research into long-term alternatives to fossil fuels. (NYT, 3/15/2013)

Twelve paragraphs about Obama's latest green energy investment proposal. Not a single mention - not one - of the myriad of failures from his previous schemes. It is as though Solyndra, Ener1 and others never happened. Oh, and he wants another $2 billion....


Signals
In the national debate that has followed the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, much of the focus has been on regulating firearms. But many law enforcement and mental health experts believe that developing comprehensive approaches to prevention is equally important. In many cases, they note, the perpetrators of such violence are troubled young people who have signaled their distress to others and who might have been stopped had they received appropriate help. (NYT, 3/14/2013)

At last an article on an outstanding ongoing approach to gun violence. In short, in Los Angeles, they seek to identify the potentially mentally ill perpetrators BEFORE they kill. 


Victim Alert!
Ms. Brady, for instance, earns about $1,800 a month in take-home pay. But she paid for her undergraduate and graduate education in part with loans, which cost her about $400 a month. She also is trying to pay down her credit card debt, which requires about $500 a month. After food, rent and living expenses, there is little left over. (NYT, 3/14/2013)

The New York Times finds new victims in young people who just cannot seem to save for their retirement. Included here is Ms. Brady who - despite a B.A. and an M.A. - managed to rack up credit card debt requiring payments totaling $6000 per year. Cry us a river.


Retention
It would repeal his health insurance exchanges and expansion of Medicaid, but retain cuts to Medicare that the Republican presidential ticket, Mitt Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, spent months denouncing. (NYT, 3/14/2013)

A snarky, dishonest dig at Paul Ryan and his budget. The Times points out - correctly - that Romney/Ryan hammered Obama on cuts to Medicare (which redirected those dollars to Obamacare). At the time, Obama and the Legitimate Media cried foul and accused R/R of lying. So now - anxious to accuse Ryan of hypocrisy - the Times unwittingly admits that R/R were right in the first place!


Effective
Employers are bracing for a little-noticed fee in the federal health-care law that will charge them $63 for each person they insure next year, one of the clearest cost increases companies face when the law takes full effect. (WSJ, 3/14/2013)

The drip-drip-drip of Obamacare taxes.....


Zeal
George W. Bush was excoriated for waterboarding exactly three terrorists, all of whom are now enjoying an extensive retirement on a sunny Caribbean island (though strolls beyond Gitmo’s gates are prohibited). Whereas President Obama, with thousands of kills to his name, evokes little protest from yesterday’s touch-not-a-hair-on-their-head zealots. Of whom, of course, Sen. Obama was a leading propagandist.

Such hypocrisy is the homage Democrats pay to Republicans when the former take office, confront national security reality, feel the weight of their duty to protect the nation — and end up doing almost everything they had denounced their predecessors for doing. The beauty of such hypocrisy, however, is that the rotation of power creates a natural bipartisan consensus on the proper conduct of this war. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 3/14/2013)

Krauthammer echoes a recent point by RedStateVT on what happens when Liberals are confronted with national security issues. 


Assumed
The underlying assumption behind coverage like this is that the Catholic Church is a primitive institution in need of being brought up to date. Sometime in the past 50 years or so, it was revealed that men and women are more or less interchangeable, that sexual liberty is a blessing, that homosexuality is normal and celibacy is deviant, and even, as per Kramer, that women ought to wear pants. By now all right-thinking people agree on all these points. Those old men in Rome not only doubt them but act is if they actually think they know better! What is the matter with them? (James Taranto, WSJ, 3/14/2013)

Taranto follows up on RedstateVT's point about how Liberals know exactly what needs to be done to fix the Catholic Church. Namely, the Church should be more like....Liberals. (By the way, this is the same advice that Liberals give to the Republican Party.)