This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Poetrooper

  • If He’s Lost Bowie State…

    You probably can’t find a better example of bedrock Obama support than on the campuses of America’s traditionally black colleges.

    But now, with the introduction of Obamacare, the students at Bowie State University find themselves without health insurance after school administrators were forced to cancel their extremely affordable health care insurance to be in compliance with Obamacare regulations.

    Watch this video and tell me that there aren’t some hairline cracks developing in that black bedrock of belief in Obama’s infallibility. And this is happening in the heart of America’s wealthiest black-majority enclave, Prince George’s County, Maryland.

    Let’s see how long it takes the White House to slap a bring-em-back Band-Aid on this boo-boo.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • String ‘Em Up by Their Ponytails

    In a recent O’Reilly “Mad as Hell” segment, a student-viewer expressed his anger at being unable to voice his conservative views in the college classroom without fear of reprisal from his liberal professors.

    Think about that for a moment. We send our youth to college so that they can lead more productive and lucrative lives, to become contributing citizens who help weave more strength into the fabric of this nation. In that context, every stout thread has value, whether it warps left or right.

    And the key word in that sentence is “value,” and even more particularly, “future value.”

    Now consider that in many personal injury lawsuits, a key factor in establishing damages against a defendant is the degree to which his actions have limited the future earnings of the plaintiff. By that measure, very large amounts can be calculated that juries must weigh in the process of redressing the wrong. This is one reason why so many medical malpractice judgments and awards are so large.

    Now gather those two truths into one line of thinking: those pursuing college degrees are doing so in order to better their life experience, and the best way to do that is to increase one’s earning ability. And since one’s college transcript can be a decisive determinant in the hiring process, those who control what ends up in that transcript have a definite influence and impact on any student’s career path and earning capacity.

    Test case: a former paratrooper who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is pursuing a degree in an American university, and he finds that his world and political views, formed on the basis of his extensive on-the-ground, life-and-death experiences and participation in key world events, are considered unacceptable and unworthy to the gray-ponytailed remnants of Woodstock who reign in the classrooms, the limp, life-impotent wimps totally lacking in similar real-life experiences, who conduct his courses. And because those old failed and fading hippies find his views offensive to their own hard-left positions, his classwork is shaded in the shadow of their political bias. An otherwise perfectly well-reasoned paper is D-graded or even failed because the premise offends the political sensibilities of the ponytailed Bolsheviks.

    At the end of four years, what is the effect of those politically determined grades on the overall numeric accounting of that soldier’s scholastic performance? If the effect is to drop the grade point average from A to B — or worse, A to C or even D — how does that appear to those who will then be using that grade from that transcript to form their initial opinions in granting that applicant an interview?

    Have those liberal professors not had a direct negative impact on that young veteran’s ability to be hired? Have they not had a direct negative impact on his ability to maximize his earning ability? Of course they have.

    So I suggest that people in the soldier’s position sue the offending school for the loss of future earnings. If multiple suits of this nature are filed, it will take only one courtroom success to set all the loss-prevention specialists at universities all over the country to pondering their future financial threat. From that point I cannot predict, but knowing the reflexively defensive nature of these institutions to anything that threatens their financial bases, some changes will surely be made.

    Will such changes end the problem? Nope, not entirely, but they will unquestionably ensconce a watchful, wary administrative eye over the classroom conduct and the course grading of that gray-ponytailed communist cohort who presently contaminates the campus. When such lefties become a legal liability to their employing institutions, their own future employment and earning capabilities become problematic.

    Will some stout Iraq-Afghanistan veteran out there going to college on G.I. benefits and facing this kind of leftist oppression please file the first precedent-setting suit? Or better yet, a graduate who was low-graded by his leftist professors and who has found that the low grading has had impact on his hirability? One win is all it will take to begin the change to this perversity that now pollutes honest educating all across this country.

    Veteran, G.I. Bill status will lend great weight to the truth of a plaintiff’s claim to exposing ongoing injustice in the educational environment. I know, I know — as an old soldier myself, never, never volunteer, but some courageous warrior needs to stand tall for himself and his vast Band of Brothers whose post-combat careers should not be limited and diminished by these hellish covens of tenure-protected pinko professors.

    Dare I suggest they be strung up by their ponytails?

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Another Runaway Roaring Down the ObamaCare Tunnel

    If the Obama administration thinks it has its hands full trying to create an effective system for enrolling participants, as the saying goes, “They ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.” Anyone with experience in the health care market can tell you that a far bigger problem than program enrollment or even delivery of services is billing and collections.

    This ongoing train wreck of an introduction to the enrollment program has had many of us wondering how in the world these clowns will ever be able to handle the much more difficult issue of paying for it. Even the Washington Post can see the pending problems as outlined in an article by the former boss of the Massachusetts forerunner of Obama’s program.

    Jon Kingsdale, who ran the Bay State operation from 2006 to 2010, correctly shows just how those billing and premium payment problems are going to be hugely difficult for ObamaCare. Many of the very people whom ObamaCare was designed to insure are the very poor, and those folks share a common cultural trait that is going to guarantee that difficulty: they don’t use banks, and most can’t get credit cards. Since virtually all health insurance billing and premium collection are done either by bank check or electronic transfer through a bank checking or credit card account, an administrative cost-saver for insurers, how are these folks going to make their payments? According to this report by Jackson Hewitt Tax Services, the number of these “unbanked Americans” is just under 50 million and that:

    More than one in four uninsured Americans eligible for the new premium assistance tax credits under the ACA does not have a checking account. Among the uninsured, non-elderly population with household incomes in the tax credit eligible range, 27 percent are effectively “unbanked.”

    The Jackson Hewitt report says the problem can be easily fixed simply by the government forcing insurers to accept debit card payments. But they fail to note that this will require setting up another federal program akin to EBT, and doing it very quickly — within weeks, in fact. Good luck with that.

    At WaPo, linking to the JH report, Kingsdale notes even more problems:

    Enrollees are not covered until their first month’s premium is received. In the individual insurance market, premium billing and collection is difficult to track. Folks frequently pay late or in weekly installments, or send too little or even too much. And when they stop paying, they often do not notify the insurer; the company must determine whether it is an intentional termination, an oversight, or a lost or late payment. Unlike most of today’s 15 million direct enrollees, who pay premiums on their own, an estimated 27 percent of those who will be eligible for tax credits under the ACA do not have checking accounts. So they must use cash, money orders or prepaid debit cards to pay their share of monthly premiums.

    Remember, enrollees remain uninsured until their first month’s premium is received. And until the exchanges begin to collect premiums, their operations remain underfunded — a bit of a Catch-22.

    This has all the appearance of a runaway locomotive roaring down ObamaCare’s tunnel of troubles, headed smack into the caboose of the already derailed Enrollment Express.

    You have to shake your head in wonder that ObamaCare’s promoters failed to anticipate and address this payment train wreck. It has to make you wonder just how well these liberal elites really understand the poor folks they profess to stand up for.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Obama Treads on Tradition

    In yet another example of the spiteful pettiness of the woefully inept and totally inadequate commander-in-chief that low information voters have so unfortunately saddled upon our military, Navy SEALs and other naval warriors serving in combat are being ordered to remove the authorized Navy Jack from their battledress uniforms. That information comes from former SEAL and author, Carl Higbie, writing over at Daily Caller. According to Higbie, many of his colleagues have contacted him complaining of orders from their higher-ups to remove the traditional patch because it is controversial and associated with radical groups.

    That a symbol birthed in the same revolution that birthed this country,steeped in two hundred years of naval tradition and flown on the bows of American naval vessels worldwide, can be seen as controversial and radical is just another indication of how hypersensitive and intolerant the Democrat Left is of any expression of political thought not strictly in accordance with their very narrow views. You see, the radical groups that the Obama administration is so concerned about are the various manifestations of the Tea Party movement, many of which display the Gadsden Flag as a symbol of their determination to preserve the constitutional foundations of this nation.

    Gee, virtually all the Tea Party events I’ve witnessed usually display far greater numbers of this symbol than the Gadsden Flag. When do you suppose Obama’s no-balls, butt-bussingbrass in the Pentagon will get around to banning itswearing on the uniform and other forms of military display? Folks, we have to face the fact that an administration that will employ the IRS to enforce its political will certainly has no compunction about reshaping our nation’s military into an instrument to reflect and impose that same will.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • A History of Lying

    There’s a piece up over at American Thinker that should be of interest to TAH followers. In fact, it is the very kind of exposé that TAH is famed for. However, in this case, the lowlife scumbag spinning faux tales of military valor isn’t your typical lowlife scumbag usually found on these pages but a prominent professor and Pulitzer-winning author, Joseph Ellis. The Los Angeles Times published an op-ed hit piece by Ellis wherein he sneeringly attacks the Tea Party and conservatives. M. Catharine Evans, writing at American Thinker, points out that historian Ellis is a demonstrated serial liar regarding his own history and that much of his lying is in regard to Stolen Valor issues, such as serving in combat with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam.

    Ellis, who also prevaricates about his high school athletic prowess, was exposed years ago but apparently his demonstrated dishonesty poses no problem for the Times. The liberal left has no problem embracing phony heroes, John Kerry being the poster child proof of that. But can you just imagine the dismissive contempt in the liberal media were a conservative guilty of stolen valor to write such an op-ed attacking a leftist political organization and congressional Democrats?

  • The Affordable Care Act: Rosemary’s Baby?

    Talking heads all over the coastal blue belts and inside the Beltway are belting the Republicans as the big losers in the momentous political struggle over government funding and ObamaCare. The media consensus, including too many at FOX, is that the Republicans caved and have thus handed the Dems and President Zero a huge victory, setting the stage for a Democratic sweep in next year’s congressional elections.

    Excuse me, but have any of those pundits factored into that equation the blooming national disaster so ironically labeled the Affordable Care Act? Starting with an enrollment system that is mostly inaccessible, and when it is, grudgingly unfolding in bits and bytes, is a budget-rending monstrosity for most young Americans who must purchase their own health insurance, ObamaCare is a gift the Republicans should accept as an unread blessing. The blogosphere is ripe with examples of sticker shock expressed by younger people who are for the first time seeing the actual truth of Hope and Change. Hardworking, productive young citizens finally are coming to the realization that such hope and change doesn’t include them.

    What once seemed to be such an obviously simple solution to seeing that all Americans have health insurance has run up on the diamond-hard reality of economics: somebody has to pay. Guess what, all you young idealists who voted for Obama and supported national health care: he built it on your strong, young backs, and it is a burden you, the gradually aging healthy, will carry for decades until you finally become users of the services, which will by then likely be reduced to a skeleton of what you could have had before your liberal god destroyed the system.

    There is hope, however, that this now-emerging monstrosity, breeching in the worst way, may be aborted in its birthing process — surely a scenario liberals can admire, what with it being born barely breathing and with little hope of eventual functionality. By liberal doctrine, that’s a non-entity, a null, nothing to ever take life. Truth be told, the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, and the liberal movement have taken a bite too far — one they can’t chew, one they can’t swallow, and one they will likely choke mightily on at some future date.

    Back to the premise of my title: those who have rendered this legislative Rosemary’s Baby dead on arrival are not all those acquiescent Republicans in Congress, but the Republican governors who refused to go along with the ObamaCare concept of organizing state exchanges, because those governors wisely saw that path as detrimental to their citizens and their budgets. They resisted and they won by forcing the Feds into taking up their slack and attempting to piece together a multi-state exchange to replace the non-conforming state exchanges. And did it ever have the desired effect. The feds, under the questionably competent Kathleen Sebelius, rolled out an internet interface that is laughably unworkable, financially punitive, and incapable of enrolling folks who face significant dollar penalties if not enrolled by the first of the year.

    And to these incompetent federal fools Americans will willingly entrust their health care?

    I don’t think so…but I sense that something big is coming from a populace so ill-served.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Too Late Opened, Too Sacred to Be Closed

    The news that a group of WWII veterans and their caring companions had defied a federal closure order and visited the National World War II memorial on the Mall in Washington warmed my and millions of other Americans’ hearts. While it is still uncertain exactly how the barriers were removed, if this Obama administration isn’t completely tin-eared, it is obvious that those barriers should remain removed.

    It took far too long for our WWII memorial to be authorized and constructed; it didn’t open until April 2004, just a year short of six decades after the closing of the worldwide effort, heroism, and sacrifice it was erected to honor. Amazingly, there were those who believed that process to be too hasty even while the men and women the site was to honor were dying in increasing numbers with every year that passed. Fortunately, the memorial was able to open in time for millions of those it honored to experience their nation’s tribute personally.

    One of those who did that was my father-in-law, who at the age of 25 and as a father of two was drafted to serve in the 65th Infantry Division, one of those several unique units whose two-year existence on the world stage was for the sole purpose of storming Fortress Europe. Although he spoke little of his service, he and I shared the bond of both being combat infantrymen, though in vastly different wars. When the memorial opened in 2004, I called him in New Mexico and offered to take him to see it on a guys-only trip. Somewhat to my surprise, he enthusiastically accepted.

    A friend in Virginia, also a Vietnam veteran, agreed to provide local transportation and serve as our Washington guide. That trip turned out to be one of the most memorable and moving events of my life, worth every penny of the cost. As we pushed the wheelchair-bound old warrior around his beautiful memorial, he was beaming with pride and engaging in happy conversation with many others just like him. Unlike my own memorial, that long black, solemn Wall, this striking marble monument was a place of joy and celebration, not one of grief and regret. I feel blessed that I was able to share that experience with my father-in-law and his fellow celebrants.

    From that experience I hold a reverence for that memorial and the waning old warriors it honors, which tells me it is totally dishonorable for the Obama administration to deliberately and spitefully use this sacred site of tribute as nothing more than just another pawn in the political chess game it is now playing with the Republicans in Congress. As commander-in-chief, Barack Obama again demonstrates to the nation and to the world that he is tin-eared, tone-deaf, and totally unqualified when it comes to leading and honoring those who now serve this country as well as those who once did. Only an inexperienced and incompetent fool could fail to recognize that of all the federal edifices in Washington, there are many that could and should be closed before this one: a tribute built decades too late and now too sacred to be closed.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • A Message for the Murderers

    One of the seminal photographs of my war was this one of the young, naked Vietnamese girl fleeing the horrors of combat, taken in June 1972, five years after I decided to leave the Army and pursue a college degree under the newly-reinstated G.I. Bill. Like the tens of millions, perhaps more, around the world, who saw that photo, I was horrified, perhaps more than most, because I had been there and seen worse. That picture brought all that collateral killing and wounding of those innocents caught in the war’s crossfires back, to me far too vividly.

    Nothing has haunted me more from my tour as an infantry NCO in Vietnam than the now blessedly fading memories of children caught up in the violence they could not comprehend. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bleeding heart; I’m a staunch supporter of America’s military might being employed to defend our interests. But that doesn’t mean I have to ever accept the killing of innocents that always seems to accompany military operations. For that reason, I will always consider John Kerry to be beneath contempt, because he made this gullible nation and an even more gullible world believe that young men like me, doing our best to defend the innocent, were cold-blooded killers of those innocents.

    We weren’t.

    We tried to protect them as best we could but that effort was hamstrung by the fact that we were Caucasians operating in an oriental environment; I was automatically suspect among the native Vietnamese I dealt with because of my Scot-Irish blue eyes, which they probably saw as colonial French. Simply put: they didn’t trust the Round-eyes, blatant but understandable racism on their part. But it was racism that killed them. We did try; as an NCO, I came down hard on any of my troops I saw being harsh or cruel to the locals. It did little good in the long run because the worldwide leftist propaganda machine saw it to be in their political interest to portray American soldiers as cold, heartless, soulless baby killers, the exact opposite of what we were. We were tried and convicted by the media and the Democrat Party and whipped through endless media distortions of battlefield events up that long hill to our Golgotha where John Kerry personally nailed us to his cross of pure political ambition.

    All this is prefatory to my response to a photo I came across today in my daily searching of the web. This picture of this toddler caught up in mindless terrorist violence in Nairobi melted this old soldier’s heart. More importantly, and far more significantly for my enemy, those who perpetrated this atrocity upon these helpless civilians a world away from my comfort haven, this picture solidifies in my mind just who it is that is mine, my nation’s, and civilization’s real enemy. Events like this and the pictures they produce serve only to harm the Islamic cause, as they fill stubborn old men such as me, all round the world, with a cold resolve to never negotiate nor compromise with such evil beings as you, but only to kill you using whatever means and methods are required.

    Count on this: We are going to hunt you down and kill you…

    Crossposted at American Thinker