"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." ~ The Declaration of Independence, our first founding document
TheRightScoop: Let’s remember Delbert Belton today and the great sacrifice he made for our great country and for freedom’s sake. He was, indeed, part of the greatest generation.
DMN: The Perot Foundation announced a $1 million donation to Planned Parenthood this week, at a time when lawmakers and some charities are distancing themselves from the major provider of women’s health services.Remember, women's health services is code for abortion. Coincidentally, you won't read of this barbaric practice by its #1 provider mentioned anywhere in this piece. However, this says more about the Perot Foundation than what we already know about Planned Parenthood.
The Perot gift comes at a vital time for women who need it most, Planned Parenthood officials said.
The state transitioned this past winter to its Texas Women’s Health Program, which essentially cut off funding to Planned Parenthood providers in the state.
OBAMA: There is an argument that was made in 1964, 1965 on through the ’80s and ’90s in which those who resisted any change in the status quo, particularly when it came to economic opportunity, made two big arguments.
Argument number one was, any efforts by government to help folks who were locked out of opportunity, whether it was minorities or the poor generally, unions, any effort by government to help those folks is bad for the economy. And that became a major argument. And if, in fact, people start thinking the government’s the problem instead of the solution, then what that leaves you is whatever the marketplace does on its own. And what we’ve seen is a marketplace that increasingly produces very unequal results. And it – so it – it disempowers our capacity for common action to do something about poverty, to do something to help middle-class families.
And I think the second element to that argument that has been made, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, is that government has hurt middle-class families or hurt white working-class families, because, you know, pointy-headed bureaucrats in Washington are just trying to help out minorities or trying to give them something free.(PBS NewsHour, August 28, 2013)
Trust me, what was on the ground wasn't the only trash that dishonored MLK yesterday. Consider the misrepresentations of Rev. King's message of equality pronounced by most of yesterday's speakers.WT: The day after thousands rallied to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, the National Mall looks like a trash dump.
The grass from the Lincoln Memorial to the World War II Memorial is covered Sunday with empty soda cans, water bottles, boxed lunches, newspapers, a broken chair and rally signs. The Reflecting Pool also was filled with trash.
Although the trash cans were full along the expanse, the attendees did not attempt to leave their garbage near the bins. Instead, they left everything on the grass where they stood.
On Saturday, prominent Democrats such as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, along with civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson and MSNBC host Al Sharpton spoke to tens of thousands assembled along the expanse.
The trashed National Mall on Sunday demonstrates disrespect for our nation and other citizens. The shameful mess left behind from the anniversary march dishonors King’s memory.
"Now, here’s the thing. Martin Luther King Jr. can now be used to promote anything. And in the process, I think if these people on the left are not careful, they’re gonna end up diminishing this man. They’re gonna commercialize this man and this speech, and they’re gonna turn him and what he stood for into a commodity. I mean, they’re dangerously close to commoditizing this now."
Many conservatives, libertarians and Republicans were distinctly absent. Some were invited just days before the event, while others were not invited at all. Wonder why? (/sarcasm)TheHill: [Black conservatives] contend the left is appropriating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memory and willfully understating the degree of progress the United States has made in overcoming the egregious racial injustices that characterized an earlier era.
They also argue Americans aren’t hearing the right message from leaders — mainly Democratic and liberal — who will celebrate the anniversary from the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday.
Mia Love, the Republican mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, is black and was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. She contends that modern-day civil rights activists, in league with the Democratic Party, de-incentivize personal responsibility and economic independence.
“I believe Dr. King would be saddened by the way that some of these leaders are telling Americans that they are victims and their only hope for a better future is a government handout,” she said. “It does nothing but keep black Americans dependent.”
Herman Cain, who sought the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, told The Hill that if King were alive today, “he would say congratulations on the progress that you have made as a nation and that black people have made in the last 50 years.”
“But he would also say shame on you as a nation for where you have lost ground,” said Cain, who pointed to rising racial tensions and several downward trend lines.
“We have lost ground, especially black people, on the number of people graduating from high school. We have lost ground, black people, on babies born out of wedlock. We have lost ground, a bit, on racial tension: I don’t think it is as bad as the 50s and 60s but the flames have been fanned by some of the things in the media,” he said.
However, one could make the argument that even Democrats are fed up, as the crowd estimate only topped 20,000, compared to the expected 100,000.WashingtonExaminer: Sen. Tim Scott, R.-S.C., the only African American serving in the United States Senate, wasn't invited to the event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's march on Washington, though a host of Democratic luminaries spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
“Senator Scott was not invited to speak at the event,” Greg Blair, a spokesman for the South Carolina lawmaker, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The senator believes today is a day to remember the extraordinary accomplishments and sacrifices of Dr. King, Congressman John Lewis, and an entire generation of black leaders. Today’s anniversary should simply serve as an opportunity to reflect upon how their actions moved our country forward in a remarkable way.”
The event organizers didn't completely exclude Republicans from the event — former President George W. Bush, for instance, received an invitation, but he couldn't attend as he is recovering from surgery — but the slate of speakers was filled with names such as former President Clinton, Gov. Martin O'Malley, D-Md., Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Foxx and others.
President Obama was the keynote speaker of the event, of course, which is held in honor of the achievements of Dr. King and other civil rights leaders. Wouldn't it have made sense to have the first black president joined by the first black senator from South Carolina, which was a Jim Crow state when the original march on Washington took place?
The Washington Examiner contacted MLK Dream 50 to ask why Scott wasn’t invited, but didn’t hear back in time for publication.
"At one time, black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees of everybody else, now we do. Now, the fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems that black Americans face, but they're not civil rights problems. And if we view them as civil rights problems, the solutions will be illusive forever."Williams lists examples, such as the 'devastating' illegitimacy rates among blacks, the 'grossly fraudulent' education received by the average black student, or black-on-black crime that makes up over 50% of the homicide rate in this country, acknowledging that while these are serious problems within the black community, they're not civil rights problems. These are socio-economic problems. The Left has twisted MLK's civil rights message into one of so-called economic equality. Williams says one has nothing to do with the other, but for those who view civil rights as economic equality, "we ought to look at all the government rules and regulations that are supported by black congressmen, labor unions, civil rights leaders, that handicap people moving up the economic ladder."
Related links: A Minority View"What I’m saying to you this morning, my friends, even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; (Go ahead) sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
If you can’t be a pine on the top of a hill
Be a scrub in the valley—but be
The best little scrub on the side of the hill,
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.
If you can’t be a highway just be a trail
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or fail—
Be the best of whatever you are.
And when you do this, when you do this, you’ve mastered the length of life."
RUSH: There’s a big argument. Let’s just cut to the chase here on Obamacare. The arguments are: Delay it/defund it. You’re part of the defund it side. You think it can happen via the continuing resolution debate the end of September. The delay crowd and the people opposed to this say, “No, no, no! A government shutdown’s part of this and look what happened the last time the government was shut down in ’95. Look what happened to Republicans then.” How do you deal with this? What do you tell people that raise these objections?
CRUZ: Well, part of the problem with the delay crowd is they don’t have a plan to actually get it done. When they say they want to delay it, what they really mean is they want to take a symbolic vote on a delay but not tie it to anything that has to pass. So the House can take a thousand symbolic votes if they want. Harry Reid will not allow any of them to pass into law. So it becomes an exercise of just political cover rather than actually fixing the problem.
Look, Rush, Obamacare, as you know, is the biggest job killer in the country, and the wheels are falling off of this thing. I mean, there is bipartisan agreement it’s not working. The unions are jumping ship. People are losing their jobs. They’re having their hours forcibly reduced. Just last week UPS told 18,000 employees, “You’re losing your spousal coverage. Your husbands and wives are losing their health insurance because of Obamacare.”
And unfortunately right now, Republicans are still not ready to stand up and do what it takes to stop this law, to listen to the American people and say, “Listen, let’s get rid of this job killer.” The only plan that has been put forward that has any realistic prospect of success, of actually stopping Obamacare, is using the continuing resolution on September 30th and saying, “We will not fund one penny of Obamacare.”
If we can get 41 Republicans in the Senate to do that, or 218 Republicans in the House, we have the votes to do it, but we gotta get those votes — and right now, far too many Republicans are scared of this fight.
Related link: President Obama Talks with Tom Joyner & Sybil Wilkes About Dr. MLK’s Legacy, ‘The Butler’ & MoreWNEW: Appearing on the Tom Joyner Morning Show Tuesday, President Barack Obama says the iconic civil rights leader would have backed the Affordable Care Act.
“Oh, he would like that … because I think he understood that health care, health security is not a privilege; it’s something that in a country as wealthy as ours, everybody should have access to,” Obama explained…
Alveda is absolutely correct, as any biography of Margaret Sanger will reveal. S&L links to some interesting research into Sanger's involvement with setting up one of the first Planned Parenthood prototypes in Harlem during 1929 to prove Dr. King's point.SILive: A niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is suing to block implementation of the signature policy initiative of the nation's first black chief executive.
Dr. Alveda King, the director of African-American outreach for the New Dorp-based Priests for Life, objects to President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act on the grounds that its provision for free contraception compromises civil rights.
"There are racist and eugenic roots to this thinking," Dr. Alveda King, a self-described social activist, said in a Priests for Life news release. "Efforts to control the population always target minority and lower-income groups. We will not sit still and allow this to happen."
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mediaite: Rush Limbaugh predicted today that at tomorrow’s events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, President Obama will “turn the occasion into something about him and his presidency,” promoting his personal political agenda on a day dedicated to the legacy of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr.
Limbaugh noted how it appears Obama will address the impending budget battle and “attack the wealthy,” the latter a charge he found amusing, considering Obama will be joined by the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Foxx, and Forest Whitaker. Limbaugh mocked the idea that these people would stand before a crowd and “claim that they have everything in common with the audience that will be there.”
RUSH: "This is why I have been told private privately that people are not happy with what this thing is going to be tomorrow — on the Democrat side and the African-American side. Really. You know, Martin Luther King, for those of you that weren’t around 50 years ago, you talk about somebody that was transformational? To take the 50th anniversary of that event and to convert it, hijack it into something to advance your political agenda?Say...didn't Obama already give this speech, though? Yeah...when he was bashing the rich during a supposed MLK speech in 2002...
That’s as bad as wedding crashing, funeral crashing that the Clintons are famous for. This is really unseemly, if you ask me. I mean, this is close to these guys doing their Miley Cyrus impersonation. This is not cool. “King Anniversary Puts a spotlight on Obama”? “Economics is a safe way to talk about race,” meaning economics, grants one permission via class warfare and class envy to spout racism, which is what we’re gonna hear.
So there’s that. I had a friend of mine send me some excerpts opf Martin Luther King’s speech 50 years ago. There are four of them. He said, “You know, Rush, when I read what King said, I am reminded more of things you say than things Obama says,” which I took as a great compliment."
Here is a handy chart for individuals looking to calculate their Obamacare tax...based on the data found here. Remember, the final tax will be the higher of the flat rate, and a percentage of adjusted taxable income; everybody’s getting hit with this.Well, the Obama administration is expecting the sycophants, shills and gimmicks to win over the brunt of the 'young invincibles,' hoping young people won't crunch the numbers and figure out what's actually affordable. Here, let Moe help you out with it.
But I hear you say, What about the subsidies, Moe? OK, let’s talk about those. Below is a table showing the cost of a Bronze-level health care plan after subsidies, compared to that of the Obamacare tax. Numbers were calculated using the Henry J Kaiser Foundation’s subsidy calculator; as should be obvious, they are estimating an average yearly cost for a Bronze plan to be $2,501.
The magical cut-off number, according to Kaiser, is around $16,600. An individual making that much money will be about as well off if he or she gets a Bronze level health care plan as s/he would simply paying the $95 tax. Anybody making between that and about $33,000 will get some subsidies, but – and here’s the important part – it’ll still be cheaper to pay the tax. Anybody making more than that? …No subsidies, obviously; and to be fair, people making that kind of money start to be the kind of people who have health care through their jobs anyway (At least, they’re the kind of people who have health care through their jobs now. Ask me again in a year.).
This is crony socialism, plain and simple, folks. And though it may have only crept in from the left, you can bet by now it's got fingerprints from both sides of the aisle on it. Otherwise, there'd be no question regarding the effort to defund it.TheHill: ObamaCare has become big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyists and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside.
More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010.
Major lobbying firms...can all boast an Affordable Care Act insider on their lobbying roster — putting them in a prime position to land coveted clients.
Veterans of the healthcare push are now lobbying for corporate giants...and for healthcare companies...
Ultimately, the clients are after one thing: expert help in dealing with the most sweeping overhaul of the country’s healthcare system in decades.
The voracious need for lobbying help in dealing with ObamaCare has created a price premium for lobbyists who had first-hand experience in crafting or debating the law.
Experts say that those able to fetch the highest salaries have come from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or committees with oversight power over healthcare.
Demand for ObamaCare insiders is even higher now that major pieces of the law, including the healthcare exchanges and individual insurance mandate, are being set up through a slew of complicated federal regulations.
"You know, if I had a father, he would look like “Shorty” Delbert Belton, and, if I had a son, he’d look like Chris Lane. Nobody’s gonna say that. Obama has not called the parents of Chris Lane. I don’t know if Obama has called anybody related to “Shorty” Delbert Belton, but these two were people killed by bored, thug-wannabe African-Americans. There still has been more outrage over a rodeo clown wearing an Obama mask than either of these two events combined. It’s this kind of thing — this cultural rot, this decay — that you can’t even address without being called a racist."
I don't need to continue about how much further Obama, Holder, Jackson, Sharpton or the other race-hustlers exacerbated racial tensions after the Zimmerman verdict. You witnessed the results. But both directly through these latest vicious acts themselves, as well as indirectly by those who antagonize the violence, we continue to bare witness to the one-sidedness of these local issues boiling over onto the national stage.HollandSentinel: If I had a son, he would look like Christopher Lane, the 22-year-old Australian baseball player shot dead while jogging in Oklahoma.
If I had a father, he’d look like Delbert Belton, the 88-year-old World War II veteran beaten to death in Spokane, Wash.
And yes, if I had a son, he’d look like the white teenager who police say drove the getaway car in the Oklahoma killing.
These are all true statements if we identify ourselves and each other only by the color of our skin, which, increasingly seems to be the case — including our own president.
Barack Obama helped lead the way when he identified himself with Trayvon Martin, shot by George Zimmerman in the neighborhood-watch catastrophe with which all are familiar. Stepping out from his usual duties of drawing meaningless red lines in the Syrian sand, the president splashed red paint across the American landscape:
“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
In so saying, he essentially gave permission for all to identify themselves by race with the victim or the accused. How sad as we approach the 50th anniversary of the march Martin Luther King Jr. led on Washington that even the president resorts to judging not by the content of one’s character but by the color of his skin — the antithesis of the great dream King articulated with those words.
The killings leading the news the past several days have been horrific in their apparent randomness. Were they racially motivated? Had the perps been white and the victims black, would Obama have identified with them? More to immediate concerns, did the president’s identification with Martin nourish the killing passions of these youths?King's determination goes a long way in understanding the content of character...particularly when many of our supposed leaders are lacking so today.
Hard to say with any certainty, though one of those charged in the Oklahoma shooting apparently tweeted some messages earlier this summer that unmistakenly convey racial animus toward whites. They might be dismissed as Twitter nonsense — but for the dead body.
We do know this much for certain: Had the races been reversed, the usual suspects would have had much to say. White teens beat up an elderly black veteran and leave him for dead? White teens shoot a talented black athlete visiting from another country?
Riots.
I make these observations not to further exacerbate a problem but in the hope that we can stop this craziness before things escalate. The conversation-about-race that pundits keep insisting we need to have should end where it began. Maybe in his remarks on the 50th anniversary of the greatest peaceful demonstration in history, Obama can remind Americans that if we had sons and fathers, they’d look like Christopher Lane and Delbert Belton, as well as Trayvon Martin.
Victim in chief is no role for a president.
TheBlaze: Responding to reports of racist tweets found on the suspects’ social media pages, Hicks said there is no evidence to indicate that Chris Lane was murdered because he was white.Nothing to see here...move along...
DailyMail: The 88-year-old World War II veteran who was randomly beaten to death Wednesday likely died because he tried to fend off his attackers.The Chief was quick to pull back after basically blaming the victim.
Police say that enraged the teens and turned their petty theft into full-blown murder as they continued to beat him into submission with ‘big, heavy flashlights.’
‘Our information is that the individual fought back and that may have made this, you know, a worse situation,’ said Spokane Police Chief Frank Straub in a Monday press conference.
“I’ve made this argument to my Republican friends privately, and, by the way, sometimes they say to me privately, ‘I agree with you, but I’m worried about a primary from, you know, somebody in the tea party back in my district’ or, ‘I’m worried about what Rush Limbaugh is going to say about me on radio.’”Perhaps he just made the case to Republican constituents for more primaries if his so-called Republican friends 'agree' with his agenda?! Can't be too republican, can they?
"So I got in here at the usual time after working very early this morning, late into last night on show prep and stuff, and at about ten o’clock I get an e-mail from Greta Van Susteren, and I thought, “No, no, no, no, I just did her show. She can’t be asking me back.” And it wasn’t that. Her e-mail was, “Man, oh, man, do you live rent free in Obama’s head.” And I said, “What’s this?” So I read further, and she just assumed that I knew what she was talking about, and I didn’t, but I keep scrolling her e-mail and she’d finally attached a Mediaite story in which President Obama, in an interview this morning on CNN with Chris Cuomo, once again blamed me for the gridlock in Washington.Here's more...
I am the reason he can’t move his agenda forward, which of course is silly because he’s getting everything he wants. He blamed me again. I mean, it’s like a broken record. You know what I think is happening? I think that nobody’s listening to Obama anymore. I don’t think he commands nearly the attention or the interest that he did. So what he’s doing is going back to the greatest hits, kind of like if you’re at a radio station and losing audience, play the hits, you know, stop the New Age stuff and go play the hits. Well, he’s going back and he recycled this idea that the Republicans are not cooperating with him because they’re afraid of what I’m gonna say about them.
The Republicans are not listening to me! The true irony here is that the Republicans aren't listening to me. I don't know who the Republicans are listening to, outside of their consultants, but they're not listening to me. But he's out there telling every...he's gotta blame somebody. But for what?"
AP: Maj. Nidal Hasan has been convicted of premeditated murder for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood. That means he’s now eligible for the death penalty.
Military jurors found the Army psychiatrist guilty on Friday for the attack that killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others at the Texas military base.
The trial now enters a penalty phase, where prosecutors will ask jurors to sentence Hasan to death.
Hasan is acting as his own attorney. But he didn’t call witnesses or testify, and he questioned only three of prosecutors’ nearly 90 witnesses.
Suppression? Comical coming from these clowns...TheBlaze: The Justice Department said Thursday it will sue Texas over the state’s voter ID law and will seek to intervene in a lawsuit over the state’s redistricting laws.
Attorney General Eric Holder said the action marks another step in the effort to protect voting rights of all eligible Americans. He said the government will not allow a recent Supreme Court decision to be interpreted as open season for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights.
In the voter ID lawsuit, the U.S. government will contend that Texas adopted a voter identification law with the purpose of denying or restricting the right to vote on account of race, color or membership in a language minority group.A federal court in Washington, D.C. tells you all you need to know about that opinion. I think it's time for Cruz and Abbott to come together in a melding of the minds moment on this one.
Intervening in the redistricting case would enable the federal government to present evidence about the purpose and effect of the Texas redistricting plans. A federal court in Washington, D.C., has previously held that Texas failed to meet its burden of proving that its 2011 redistricting plans and its 2011 voter identification law were not discriminatory.
Levin also weighed in...Twitchy: Attorney General Eric Holder has followed through on his promise to mess with Texas, using the power of the Justice Department to attempt to roll back the Supreme Court’s “gutting” of the Voting Rights Act in June. Holder let it be known he had no respect for the contempt of Congress vote against him, and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) today is returning the favor, telling Holder in no uncertain terms to “give it a rest.”
In a statement, Brady wrote that Holder “should understand that Texas will stop fraudsters from having unfettered access to the ballot box. Our citizens expect no less and newefforts to force Texas back under the Justice Department’s boot will not win this rodeo.”
The motion to give it a rest was seconded by Sen. Ted Cruz.
"Today's decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to sue Texas is, sadly, only the latest manifestation of the DOJ's increasing politicization under this Administration. The U.S. Supreme Court has expressly held that voter ID laws are constitutional, and DOJ’s decision today to attack Texas’ voter ID program is contrary to law.
Americans overwhelmingly support voter ID laws because they understand that voter fraud weakens our democracy, and unfortunately it is often minority voters who are the victims of that fraud. The Department of Justice should not be working to undermine the integrity of our elections."
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free." ~ P.J. O’RourkeHere's precisely how Obama was able to say with a straight face that Obamacare would make it against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Though you may maintain some semblance of an insurance policy, there's no guarantee you'll ever obtain the adequate specialists or affordable medicines necessary to treat your illness...say for instance, cancer.
So compassionate, huh? And this is but yet another example of how those who didn't read the bill before it's passage disregarded Americans' central concerns about rising costs when the actual debate began so many years ago. This addresses none of that, but simply shifts control of your health care, and thus your life, over to the powers that be in Washington.Forbes: Obamacare is going to degrade medicine but its ill effects will fall disproportionately on patients with serious conditions, especially those diagnosed with cancer.
The legislation contains provisions that directly target patients with cancer because their care is perceived as costly. These policies couldn’t be more badly timed.
We’re at a turning point in battling cancer. Doctors are finally able to reliably tailor treatments to the unique genetic composition of each patient’s tumor rather than by its location in the body alone. Other new drugs are able to prime our own immune cells to attack cancers. But Obamacare puts access to this progress at risk.
First, Obamacare is going to block the ability of patients to seek out the specialist doctors who are most likely to prescribe these cutting edge treatments. Obamacare coaxes health plans to reduce spending and healthcare utilization by limiting the choices patients will have of doctors. This is the primary way that health plans are being cheapened enough to meet Obamacare’s strict guidelines on the low value of the coverage that the plans can offer.
Next, Obamacare tries to coerce doctors to cut down on their use of costlier drugs and tests by changing the way that they’re paid. The law uses “bundled” payments, where doctors get lump sums of money to care for patients with particular medical problems. The idea is to pit the cost of the treatments doctors prescribe directly against their earnings and give doctors a potent incentive to use cheaper remedies. But these schemes will slow adoption of new technology.
Finally, Obamacare targets cancer drugs directly, by expanding a program called 340B, which siphons money away from drug developers in order to subsidize hospitals. The Obama Administration sees the program as a way to prop up the hospitals (a favored constituency) on the dime of less popular drug makers. But the oblique way the money is extracted from drug companies spawns a lot of harmful consequences that are increasing the cost of cancer care, and lowering its quality.
None of the Obamacare policies lower the actual cost of the drugs. We should be addressing the high expense of developing these medicines, where enrolling a single cancer patient into a clinical trial can top $90,000 owing to FDA regulations. Instead, Obamacare limits access to specialist doctors in order to cheapen insurance products, uses financial schemes that pay doctors more to do less, and targets the drugs that represent so much of our recent progress against cancer.
DailyBret: The United Parcel Service Inc. has plans to remove as many as 15,000 working spouses from the UPS health care plan in 2014. The company says the UPS spouses are eligible for coverage under their own employers, but the company is pointing to Obamacare as the main reason for the decision. Under the current law, large employers are only required to cover employees and dependent children.
In a memo to employees, UPS states rising health care costs, "combined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost."
The decision will save the company an estimated $60 million a year and will only apply to non-union U.S. workers.
"Republicans, for all intents and purposes, in five years, haven't had the power to stop anything. And it's worse than that. Aside from a couple of instances, they haven't even really tried. And yet, as you know by now, if you listen regularly, Obama totally, in this group of people, the low-information voters, the Millennials, certain percentage of Democrat voters, Obama escapes any responsibility for it, any blame. This is what flummoxes me. This is what just blows my mind. People have lost faith in the country, folks. They have not lost faith in Obama. Do you understand the importance of that, the profundity of that? Not at me; the reality of it. These Millennials, these young people, these disaffected Democrat voters, everybody miserable and unhappy has lost faith in the country.
They don't think the country is good anymore. They don't think the country's great. They don't think the country's exceptional. They don't think it's special. They don't think that the country holds the answers. In fact, their misplaced faith should be exclusively in Obama. So the damage Obama is doing is even worse than you might think. Not only are his policies transforming this country into a country that was never founded nor intended to be. Not only are his policies literally depressing people and consuming them with negativism, Obama's existence, his presidency, his policies have resulted in people losing faith in the country, not in him. And that's dangerous, because that makes it much easier for Obama and any Democrat to continue to talk about changing the country, if people have lost faith in it.
There isn't anything wrong with the country as founded. There isn't anything wrong with the country as it existed. What is wrong is what's being done to it by virtue of Obama policies."
"There's a political party making this happen.The misdiagnosis of what voters want, along with the lack of pushback, has resulted in a political party in paralysis...
There's a president and a political party and an ideological movement that is causing people to lose faith in their country, and there isn't a corresponding political party saying, "No, this is a great country. This is a wonderful place. It's no different than it ever was, and you can make it better. You still have opportunity. You can still write your ticket in this country." There isn't a political party saying that.
There isn't an opposition political leader saying it, just maybe three or four. Instead, the Republican Party's thrown in with Democrat light."
This President, his administration, his party, are bringing the Alinsky objective to fruition...and there's no coalescent opposition countering them. If not now, when?"The opposition party's been paralyzed by race, and by the media. No criticism of Obama has been permitted. It's all called racism and bigotry and what have you.
So people who need votes to get elected conclude that there's nothing to be gained 'offending people,' even people that are never gonna vote for 'em. There's nothing to be gained by it, and so while people lose faith in the country, there's nobody telling them otherwise. There's nobody telling them, "No, no, no! You do not have to lose faith in the country. What you're actually losing faith in is socialism, liberalism, and the Democrat Party's ideology. That's what you are losing faith in."
People have to be told; they have to be instructed. There's no pushback, there hasn't been for five years. I mean, not at the electoral party level. So the idea that people can lose faith in the country isn't challenged. I don't even know how many elected Republicans would actually agree that that's what's happening. But you cannot disagree with the fact that there is not a robust happiness even among those who are succeeding, because the country isn't."
"Obamacare...not only is it a complete disaster, but I'm afraid, Sean, we're never gonna get rid of it, because the Republicans don't want to get rid of it. And instead of taking on Obama and taking on the Left, they're taking on the conservatives and constitutionalists and attacking them, telling us to wait until tomorrow and the next day. These French Republicans, they're always surrendering, and the fact of the matter is, if they're not gonna use the power of the purse to at least attack the discretionary funding, or if they're not gonna use the power of the purse in the House to pass a continuing resolution that funds part of the government but not this part of the government, what's left? Once this thing is instituted, it's not going to implode... You have to repeal a law, you have to defund a law. Laws don't implode."
"I am convinced that a lot of these people who've been around Washington for 20, 30, 40 years are very comfortable with their environment, they have no intention of re-breathing life back into the Constitution, they put out their press releases, they spew their platitudes, they have their phony votes about repeal rather than using the power of the purse. I'm fed up with it, those tricks don't work anymore. If you're not in Washington to help save this country, then get out!"Related link: What Republican Strategy to Defund Obamacare and Shut Down the Government?
PAST FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS
|
|||
Year
|
Beginning
date
(at
midnight)
|
Length in Days
|
Ending
date
|
1976
|
Thursday,
Sept 30
|
10
|
Monday,
Oct 11
|
1977
|
Friday,
Sept 30
|
12
|
Thursday,
Oct 13
|
Monday,
Oct 31
|
8
|
Wednesday,
Nov 9
|
|
Wednesday,
Nov 30
|
8
|
Friday,
Dec 9
|
|
1978
|
Saturday,
Sept 30
|
17
|
Wednesday,
Oct 18
|
1979
|
Sunday,
Sept 30
|
11
|
Friday,
Oct 12
|
1981
|
Friday,
Nov 20
|
2
|
Monday,
Nov 23
|
1982
|
Thursday,
Sept 30
|
1
|
Saturday,
Oct 2
|
Friday,
Dec 17
|
3
|
Tuesday,
Dec 21
|
|
1983
|
Thursday,
Nov 10
|
3
|
Monday,
Nov 14
|
1984
|
Sunday,
Sept 30
|
2
|
Wednesday,
Oct 3
|
Wednesday,
Oct 3
|
1
|
Friday,
Oct 5
|
|
1986
|
Thursday,
Oct 16
|
1
|
Saturday,
Oct 18
|
1987
|
Friday,
Dec 18
|
1
|
Sunday,
Dec 20
|
1990
|
Friday,
Oct 5
|
3
|
Tuesday,
Oct 9
|
1995
|
Monday,
Nov 13
|
5
|
Sunday,
Nov 19
|
Friday,
Dec 15
|
21
|
Saturday,
Jan 6, 1996
|
|
