Category: Uncategorized

by Smitty

Moe Lane, quoting IBD:

In the states with federally run exchanges, HHS will be tasked with hiring the people to run the exchanges, ensuring that insurance plans applying to be on the exchange are compliant with ObamaCare regulations, and setting up and running the websites for the exchanges. Congress has not yet appropriated the money to let HHS hire exchange employees.

…And why, exactly, should Congress appropriate more money for that? I’m sure that HHS can cut some discretionary income somewhere in order to handle the situation. Certainly the House of Representatives shouldn’t just give HHS a blank check, or anything so fiscally irresponsible; in fact, future House budget bills should deliberately not incorporate extra projected HHS exchange expenses at all. After all, HHS can take it out of the billion per year that they’ve already reserved out for exchange-based expenditures; the Department may have to tighten its belt a little, but this is the Great Recession, remember? And if the Senate doesn’t like any of this… well. They can put in any additional appropriations into their own budget, pass that and Congress can sort it all out in committee.

So, ObamaCare expected states (some of which are constrained by real-world budgeting) to set up internal bureaucracies, at their own expense. And 26 states are hoisting a middle finger at this top-down approach to generating bureaucracy.

We may need to extend The Federalist #62:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

. . .adding something like. . .

And if the law be as the product of several hundred monkeys armed with quills and hookahs, who, having partaken deeply of the finest hashish, think they have produced Shakespeare, while actually having delivered a Barbary Pirate’s nightmare, well, then, the time for tar and feathers may again be at hand.

by Smitty

American Glob picks up on the notion in the more swank right-of-center blogs that deep pockets like the Koch Brothers should buy MSNBC. The mental image of Rachel Maddow dissolving upon encounter with a teleprompter loaded with truth is satisfying (starting at 0:24):

Aliester:

The Koch Brothers should buy MSNBC and turn it over to conservative bloggers. That concludes today’s Live at Five Report with Stacy McCain and Smitty. Coming up at 6, Bill Whittle followed by Jim Geraghty and William Jacobson at 7 and Glenn Reynolds at 8. Ratings at MSNBC would go up as FOX News found itself competing for viewers for the first time since launching.

I’d vary the theme slightly and offer up the notion that the Koch’s do a KickStarter-esque project, with the notion that people putting up money have the option of converting their boodle into equity shares of The Koch Channel, or whatever. Spread the risk and build an instant market.

I don’t know that Stacy and I could anchor a show without vast amounts of training and more work than Pamela Anderson and Elizabeth Taylor combined, but I do thank Aliester for the complement.

Meanwhile, there’s a tangentially related gag on Twitter about putting (D) behind your name, so that you can say all manner of nonsense and get a media pass for it. Join the fray!

@jimmiebjr @jonahnro Hovering around asin-eight-point-five, so: yes, but not by much.

— Asin8.5 (D-NOVA) (@smitty_one_each) December 15, 2012

via Insty

by Smitty

Via preciseBlogs, Rock Center reports:

Embattled U.N. envoy Susan Rice is dropping out of the running to be the next secretary of state after months of criticism over her Benghazi comments, she told NBC News on Thursday.
“If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly – to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities,” Rice wrote in a letter to President Obama, saying she’s saddened by the partisan politics surrounding her prospects.
“That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country…Therefore, I respectfully request that you no longer consider my candidacy at this time,” she wrote in the letter obtained by NBC News.

This is kind of a shame, as I’m sure she bought that position fair and square.
This seems to re-open the door for the Senator who isn’t always clear on which state he’s mooring in:

To Democrats worried that a possible secretary of state nomination for John Kerry would clear a path for Republican Scott Brown to run for his Senate seat: Keep worrying.
Brown, beaten by liberal darling Elizabeth Warren on Nov. 6, certainly seemed to hint on Wednesday that he won’t be gone long—even as he gave what officially was his farewell speech.

This blogger just hopes that whoever relieves Hillary reinstates RSM as the Potential Future Ambassador to Vanuatu. Or at least Bulungi.

Now a Memeorandum thread

Update: via Drudge, the Examiner has:

The growing possibility of President Obama naming Democratic Sen. John Kerry as secretary of State and former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel to run the Pentagon is being embraced by Senate Republicans who predict confirmation.
“I think both of them will be questioned vigorously but confirmed,” said a top GOP Senate aide, meaning the GOP won’t put up a fight in the Democratically-controlled chamber. That will be a key selling point as Obama considers his choices.
Reports emerged Thursday that Hagel, a Vietnam vet from Nebraska, was the frontrunner to replace exiting Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

This doesn’t put the DoD in a good position for the Battle of Super-Orbital Ridges.

by Smitty

Via Daley Gator, Harry Belafonte seems bent on disproving the notion that people mellow with age:

Tell us how you really feel, Harry: should conservatives just assume the position?

by Smitty

NOVEMBER 2022–The dismal results pour in, adding to the dismay of the beleaguered conservatives. After Nancy Pelosi regained the Speaker’s gavel in 2016, she had had the power to ram through a rule for seniority in the House of Representatives to be hereditary, paving the way for her daughter, Christine to take the Pelosi seat in 2018. Harry Reid, who never saw a bad idea he could not embrace, adopted this for the Senate, allowing Rory Reid to carry on the family tradition of cretinism.

Also reporting for duty in January 2023 will be Pat Moran, who, despite a lengthy trail of female wreckage that some feminists were beginning to label ‘worrisome’, carried his district by the usual 2:1 margin. The Feminist bleatings were really about inoculating Moran, now that he was assuming office. The voters in Virginia’s 8^th district had no affection whatsoever for the fop, but the Constitutional order was so demolished that, even were a resurrected George Washington to emerge from his crypt at Mount Vernon, he’d have fared no better at the ballot box than Tevin Kranor, the Republican candidate.

Truly, the fundamental change begun under Barack Obama had resulted in the final collapse into a single, United State was complete. Yet the country was only halfway through Michelle Obama’s second term. The two chambers of Congress chiefly differed on their election frequency, but the idea of hereditary positions in government was sufficiently ingrained that Sacha Obama was testing well in the focus groups to relieve her mother.

Orwell had nearly been correct. The point was not to control the past; plenty of valid history books remained to be purged. The more attainable goal was to bury the signal in noise.

Normally, it’s co-blogger Smitty who brings us news about his congressman, the Disgrace to Virginia’s Good Name That Is Jim Moran (D-Thug). But today Jeff Quinton informs us of this impressive example of hereditary influence, Patrick “Girl-Basher” Moran:

Moran and his girlfriend were fighting outside 14th St. bar The Getaway around 1:23 a.m. on Dec. 1, according to a police report, over Moran talking to another woman at the bar. Suddenly, Moran allegedly slammed his girlfriend’s head into the bar’s metal trash can cage.
After the attack, police described Moran’s girlfriend as “bleeding heavily from her nose nose and also observed that her nose and right eye were extremely swollen.” One of the ambulance technicians who transported her to Howard University Hospital told police that Moran appeared to have broken her nose and given her a skull fracture under her right eye.
Moran was arrested for felony domestic violence assault, but pleaded the charge down to simple assault today. He was sentenced to probation.

See, it’s just a misdemeanor when Democrats beat up women. Because (a) Democrats are so “progressive”and also (b) lady parts!

Michelle Malkin has much, much more about Moran.

by Smitty

It seems that the Americans for Prosperity tent was a hotbed of raaaaacism, and the 1% were using it as a base for #WarOnWomen attacks. So I guess you can sympathize with the need for ‘honest’, State-fearing Union Goons to protect the turf on which the tent sat, and the power that the Union had accumulated through years of graft.

Elections have consequences, but only when they further Holy Progress. Otherwise, elections seem to have side-effects, mostly thuggish. Help me understand this in the comments.

Update: Liberty News Network has Steven Crowder reaching for the cupcakes, and getting thugged.

Also at RedState.

Update II: the mighty Dana Loesch interviewed Crowder here.

Update III: more at Jackie Wellfonder.

Update IV: Cue the Orwellian crapflooders:

I wonder why they asked the union guys to shred it with box cutters. RT @joe_khool: word is that it’s AFP tearing down their own tent

— Debbie M. (@mosesmosesmoses) December 11, 2012

Wait, so we’re to believe, after Kenneth Gladney, that AFP destroyed its own property? That Crowder assaulted himself? Really? The Unions are the good guys, and AFP is just engaging in a publicity stunt? Lord have mercy on these perfidous ones.

Update V: much more at Legal Insurrection.

Update VI: White House spokesman goes Full Postmodern Clown:

White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to condemn the increasing violence and threats by union members in Michigan, merely telling reporters Tuesday that “the president believes in debate that’s civil.”
When asked by a reporter about a claim by Michigan state Democrat that “there will be blood” should Republicans pass a union-choice law in Michigan, Carney professed ignorance and then downplayed the comment.
“I haven’t see those comments, and I’m not sure they mean what someone interprets them to mean,” he said.

I guess if Barack Obama had had a son, he wouldn’t have looked like Steven Crowder. Carney, you are a disgusting piece of work. Lord bless your heart, after He replaces that lump in your chest.

Update VII:

MT @marymmmc1: UNION THUG Who Beat @scrowder ID’d Name Is Tony Cummings (Video) shar.es/6VDsp #stickyfingers bit.ly/S6EAAi

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) December 11, 2012

Update VIII: via Tony Katz & WatchDogWire:
That should help dispel the notion that this was some kind of AFP-staged affair.

Update IX: linked at The Camp of the Saints:

This is exactly the kind of behavior the Left wants to see. Ever since Leftism came into being in the mid-18th Century, they have believed a necessary first step in bringing about Revolution is to sow Chaos in all areas of the society. They want the populace to break into tribes of competing grievance groups, ready to. To achieve this, the Left needs many groups from various fields it can count on to do it’s dirty work — bureaucrats, elected officials, academics, etc. These minions of the Masterminds lay the ground work by sabotaging all of the institutions of the Society from within and without, working to pervert and, thus weaken, the existing Culture.
At some point, however, the Leftist Masterminds need to move to the next phase of the march to Revolution: violence. We have entered the phase in the last few years in The United States Of America. Barack Hussein Obama and his comrades have encouraged and nurtured and unleashed forces designed to tear this country apart.

Yep. Read the whole thing.

Update X: linked at Da Tech Guy and Notion Tidbits.

Update XI: linked at the Daley Gator.

Update XII: linked at American Power and The Political Hat.

Media sycophancy provides Democrats with free campaign advertising. It also influences policy. Propaganda works, and the incessant ABC/NBC/CBS drumbeat in favor of Obama’s tax-hike agenda has persuaded a majority Americans that the problem with this country is that the wealthy aren’t “paying their fair share.”

Philip Klein points out that higher rates actually increase the value of certain deductions, and Ed Morrissey sees hypocrisy at the New York Times.