Obamacare Waivers

Since its passage 14 months ago, the grand total of year-long Obamacare "waivers" doled out by HHS now stands at 1,372.

Last month, the Obama administration approved 204 new waivers. Of those, nearly 20% (38) are for upscale restaurants, swanky nightclubs and five star hotels in Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district - the same Nancy Pelosi who, as Speaker, infamously urged the 1000+ pg law's passage because we "need[ed] to find out what's in it."

Aside from the obvious political favoritism going on here, as one lawmaker remarked, "What does it say about the feasibility of the health care law when the administration needs to exempt over 1,000 health plans from its own law?"

Thoughts? Hopefully this will get more reaction than Bin Laden's death did.

Bin Laden Open Thread

I'm just curious to hear everyone's reaction and thoughts about this week's big headline. There are a lot of potential angles deserving of comment, so please leave your thoughts below.

Political Correctness to the Extreme

I thought this was a joke when I first heard about it, but apparently it's not. A Seattle public elementary school teacher wouldn't let a high school volunteer help out with the annual Easter egg hunt unless she referred to the eggs as "Spring spheres." So the third graders didn't have an Easter egg hunt, they searched for "Spring spheres."

Wow.

Though I wouldn't do it if I were an administrator, I could understand why others would remove the word Easter as a religious reference, although Easter eggs are also part of the Jewish tradition (verified by two of my orthodox Jewish colleagues). So would Budhist, Muslim or atheist third graders or their parents be offended by the Easter reference?

But calling eggs "spheres?" Seriously? Aside from the fact that that isn't even geometrically correct, the word "egg" has no religious connotation whatsoever. Either people are taking political correctness WAY over the top, others get offended WAY too easily, or the former is a function of the latter. In any event, the kids weren't fooled. "When I took them out of the bag, the teacher said, 'Oh look, spring spheres' and all the kids were like 'Wow, Easter eggs.'"

What does this story tell you about today's society?

GOP Dark Horse to Beat Obama in 2012!

Forget Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, etc.

Obama's biggest threat next year is . . . Phil Davison from the Village of Minerva!!! Wow, you can't make this stuff up. Check out the most enthusiastic political candidate EVER.

What cracks me up is that this guy just wants to be nominated to run on the Republican ticket for a county treasurer position. It is hard to imagine a scenario where the political stakes would be lower, yet this dude is acting like his life literally depends on it. Instant classic.

'Tis the Season to Protest!

Tunisia. Egypt. Bahrain. Libya. In these places, brave citizens have taken to the streets in recent weeks to overthrow iron-fisted despots in the name of democracy - thousands being injured or killed as a result.

Contrast these protests with those taking place in Madison, Wisconsin. In the past few months, the people have democratically spoken at the ballot box all over the country, removing many Democrats and replacing them with Republicans with the clear, unmistakable mandate to get serious about out-of-control state and federal budgets. When newly-elected Republican Governor Scott Walker proposed a bill that does just that, 14 Democrat state legislators tuck tail and run for the hills (er, resorts) of Illinois, knowing they didn't have enough votes to stop the bill's passage, to deprive the Wisconsin Legislature of a quorum necessary to even vote on it.

Really??? You serious???

The last time I saw a chump, classless move like that was on the elementary school playground when the sore loser stops the game, and takes his ball and goes home instead of finishing the game. And, unlike the truly democratic protests going on in the Arab world, the Madison protests are about as anti-democratic as they come. Having lost majorities in the legislature fair and square, the Democrats flee the state to avoid their constitutional obligations to vote so that the winners of the last election cannot do what the public sent them there to do. Real mature.

Public union members have since ran out on their jobs too, teaching Wisconsin youth, to flood the Wisconsin capital and get bogus "doctor's" notes that they are too sick to go back to work. Schools across the state were forced to close as a result. These teachers are shameless. Unlike their counterparts in the private sector (whose tax dollars go to pay their salaries/benefits), public union members pay pennies on the dollar toward their pensions and virtually nothing towards their gold-plated health benefits. Even if Walker's proposals did pass, the public union members would still be making more, on average, than those in the private sector (salary+pension+benefits) despite working 3/4 the time, while still paying considerably less for their benefits than those in the private sector. Gov. Walker promises no furloughs or layoffs in exchange for these collective bargaining restrictions. Is it any wonder that they have yet to win much sympathy from the public who is paying their salaries?

You know what people should be protesting? The lack of merit-based retention, the abysmal Milwaukee high school graduation rate of 46% (34% for African-Americans), and these shameless teachers and cowardly lawmakers who think they have an inalienable right to pad their wallets by raiding everyone else's at an ever-increasing rate despite bankrupted budgets and unsustainable deficits.

What do you all think about this?

State of the Union Response

I did not watch the state of the Union address last night due to work and some homework, however I did catch the GOP's response to the state of the Union. I thought it was well thought out and eye-opening. The U.S. government has outspent their own budget by 3 trillion dollars over the past two years. That is extremely frustrating. I think both sides are to blame here, although democrats more so. It's time for Congress to make some hard decisions and start cutting the spending or increasing taxes or both. It's time to address the huge problems medicare and social security are going to cause as the baby boomers start retiring. I haven't seen that out of Pres. Obama so far, so I'll be carefully watching who the GOP decides to put out there for 2012. Why not the guy who gave the GOP speech last night? I'd like that guy to be president right about now.

And for those who think I'm a hardcore liberal, I'm not. I'll vote for whoever will be responsible with taxpayer dollars (and borrowed dollars for that matter), and right now I haven't seen that out of either party.

I also wanted to post this NBC news story about the CBO's projection of the direction the deficit is heading. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41276533/ns/politics-capitol_hill

Pro Choice Horror

Abortion "Doctor" Kermit Gosnell has been just been indicted for unspeakable, atrocious and horrific crimes. From the grand jury report:

"Gosnell regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy -- and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels -- and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths . . .

With the change of administration from (pro-life Democratic) Gov. Casey to Gov. Ridge, government health officials concluded that inspections would be 'putting a barrier up to women' seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay."

This is truly sick and disturbing. Have Roe v. Wade and hard-charging pro choice lawmakers really numbed some people to this point of blatant and callous disregard to human life?Thoughts?

Utah Liberty

It's been a while since I've posted on this blog, and it looks like it's been a while since anyone has even looked at it. But I really wanted your input on a blog post I wrote recently.

I started a website called UtahLiberty.org back in September, intended to promote libertarianism in our grand state. I wrote a post in November entitled Why You Don't Actually Believe in Free Markets. It was based on a conversation I had with a conservative friend of mine. Within hours it had been visited a couple thousand times and was shared on Twitter and Facebook by many people. There were a lot of good comments on it.

I wanted to see what you all thought of it since this is generally a conservative crowd but also an intelligent crowd. Show no mercy.

Decision Points

Last night I caught bits and pieces of Matt Lauer's interview with W. on the eve of the release of his memoir, Decision Points. I was not surprised at how relaxed and happy the former president seemed - I think leaving the White House after 8 years would have that effect on anyone. For all the negatives that could be (and have been) said about him, you have to respect the fact that he stubbornly refuses to come out and criticize President Obama, as will be seen again next week on a previously taped interview with Oprah. From last night's interview:

LAUER: Mr. President, you have-- remained mostly silent, largely silent over the last couple of years. Why did you remain silent?

BUSH: Well, for two reasons. One: I just didn't wa nt to get out there anymore. I didn't want to get back into what I call "the swamp." I was trying-- I'm trying to regain a sense of anonymity. And the other reason why is I don't think it's good for the Presidency for a former President to be opining about his successor. President Obama's got plenty of critics and-- and I'm just not gonna be one.

Today on the Daily Beast (a liberal blog), I read an article written by a democrat, Mark McKinnon, who crossed over ideological lines by helping run Bush's PR stuff during his presidential campaigns and who has known W. for 15 years. After reading the memoir, McKinnon makes 2 important and related distinctions between the current and former president; distinctions which, in my opinion, are driving factors behind the accelerating slump in Obama's approval ratings and the rise in W.'s. (although Bush doesn't care about that at all. From the Lauer interview: "Your popularity is way up since you left office . . . "So what? Seriously. I mean, if you chase popularity, you're chasing a moment. You're chasing a poof of air.")

(1) "Readers will be surprised by the number of examples in the book where President Bush takes responsibility for failures and talks about mistakes made—particularly in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans." By comparison, the only "mistake" Obama has conceded relates to "communication problems" he's had with the American people. Ever since his party got its clock cleaned in the midterms, his public comments seem to indicate he's in denial that the electorate just didn't want to go as far left as he wanted to take it, and that during a time where jobs should have been the no. 1 priority, we were force-fed pork barrel bailouts, Obamacare, and cap and trade.

(2) McKinnon: "The book does highlight, however, a fundamental difference between George Bush and Barack Obama. Bush never complains. He never blames others. He takes full responsibility for his campaigns, his administration, his life. He accepts the cards he's dealt." He quotes Bush: "I didn't feel sorry for myself, I knew there would be tough days. Self-pity is a pathetic quality in a leader. It sends demoralizing signals to the team and the country. As well, I was comforted by my conviction that the good Lord wouldn't give a believer a burden he couldn't handle." I honestly feel that many independents who voted for the Hope and Change promised in 08 but voted against Obama last week grew weary of President Obama's repeated and relentless 'woe is me' blaming of his predecessor for all of his problems.

In sum, I think all past, present and future politicians would do well (in general and at the polls) by growing up, maturing and putting more of their energies into solving the problems we face instead of blaming each other for them, especially when there is plenty of blame to go around in both parties.

Deja Me!

Hey! Check out my predictions made in a comment to a post by Devin in June of 2009:
"The pace and breadth and radicalism of Pres. Obama's blitzkrieg on capitalism will ruin the democratic party for years to come. I doubt the republicans will position themselves to take advantage. The independents will grow. We may be seeing the beginnings of pluralism in government. Ruling by coalition seems to be the only way moderation can take hold." Jeff says I was half right. Instead of the creation of a third party, the tea party folks threw in their lot with republicans. So instead of getting a coalition government, we wind up with whiplash in congress.