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

Category: Government Incompetence

  • Aww . . . Aren’t They So Cute When Their Eyes Finally Open?

    Vermont is an . . . interesting state.  They have some true      Communist idiots      lost-in-the-past Socialists       Progressives in high places there.

    Who?  Well, like their      good Communist      self-avowed Socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders.  And their highly Progressive Governor, Peter Shumlin.

    Shumlin has been advocating a “single payer” medical care system in Vermont for some time.  (For those who aren’t fluent in Progressive NewSpeak, that essentially means “government-run Socialized medicine paid for by your taxes”.)  It was planned to go into effect in 2017.

    However, Shumlin has now thrown in the towel on single payer.   It’s not going to happen.

    Hey, you don’t suppose the fact that paying for it would have required an 11.5% payroll tax – plus an additional income tax of up to 9.5% – had anything to do with that, do you?  Plus the fact that a report prepared for the governor on Vermont’s proposed single payer system indicated that implementing single payer medical care would not save money?

    Well, yes – those facts did have something to do with it.  Even that good      Socialist tool      Progressive fella Shumlin finally figured out that simply wasn’t affordable and just wasn’t going to work.  Reality smacked him in the head and made him listen – after, unfortunately, much time and many Vermont taxpayer dollars had been wasted.

    Took him long enough.  Anyone with common sense could have told him that on day one.

    Here’s the problem:  on the surface, the idea of getting free sh!t sounds great.  The problem is that when it comes to real goods and services, “free” . . . doesn’t really exist.  One way or another, someone always pays for it.  That’s called “basic economics”.  That fact is succinctly summarized in the following nine words:  “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”.

    And if it’s government-provided “free” sh!t, guess who’s paying for it?  Yep – taxpayers.  You and me.

    Even dyed-in-the-wool Progressives like Shumlin sometimes are forced to acknowledge the above truths.  Problem is, sometimes it takes them getting whacked in the head by reality before they acknowledge the truth.

     

  • About Those “9,800” US Troops Staying in Afghanistan Next Year . . . .

    Jonn wrote earlier today about US troops remaining in Afghanistan after the end of this year. Specifically, the word was we’re leaving “nearly 10,000” troops (9,800, specifically) there after the end of this year – 8,000 to support the NATO mission, with the rest dedicated to antiterrorism and/or other actions.

    But it turns out that figure the POTUS and Pentagon keep throwing out there is a bit . . . . misleading. So I thought I’d help clarify.

    The figure of 9,800 remaining in Afghanistan is consistent with what the POTUS claimed in May. Then, the claim was that we’d draw down below 10,000 troops by the end of this year; by another 50% (to less than 5,000) by the end of 2015; and to just those troops necessary for embassy security by the end of 2016.

    And that would be all well and good. Except . . . I checked some recent news stories about the subject.

    Guess what? My trouser leg is wet – yet again. And once again, it ain’t rain.

    Seems as if some of our NATO allies have recently indicated there will be a delay in fulfilling their commitments to the Afghan mission. That delay will leave a gap in the short-term – in early 2015, to be precise.

    Wanna guess who’s going to step in and fill that gap – to the tune of up to another 1,000 troops beyond those 9,800 originally planned? Naw, don’t bother to guess. Just read this link from Reuters carefully.

    The Pentagon is calling this “a ‘bridging solution’ until other nations fulfil their pledges later in the year or the troops are no longer needed”. But don’t worry. While the Pentagon acknowledged holding discussions with NATO partners, spokesman RADM John Kirby stated, “As we stand here today, there is no change in the 9,800 force level.”

    Look, we who’ve been in the military understand reacting to changes. And we understand that “the enemy has a vote”, and their actions can change our plans. The same is true of our allies.

    But GMAFB, Admiral. We weren’t supposed to send combat troops to Vietnam either, – just a few “advisers”. You’d think the Pentagon would have learned from Vietnam that misleading the US public about how many troops we’re sending to a foreign war is a “seriously bad idea”. So how about you just tell us the truth about what’s going on here, OK?

    Sheesh. This clueless DC clown krewe current Administration doesn’t appear to know its butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to national security and international relations. January 2017 can’t get here fast enough.

  • About That New ObamaCare “Open Season” . . . .

    Well, it’s ObamaCare sign-up season again. By all accounts, things are going better than last year – though that wouldn’t take much, given last year’s fiasco.

    So, that means all the problems are fixed, and everything is just “hunky-dory”, right? Um, well . . .

    I swear, you just couldn’t make this sh!t up if you tried. No one would buy it as fiction.

  • Oh, Fer Christsakes – Not Again?!

    Geez. Will someone PLEASE give the     clueless fools in charge in DC      current Administration a quarter and tell them where they can buy a clue?

    Title of the article says it all:

    U.S. weighs expanded CIA training, arming of Syrian allies struggling against Assad

    “Bad idea, sir. Very bad idea.”

  • More “Words of Wit and Wisdom” from Jonathan Gruber

    Well, there he goes again. And again.

    And he’s getting paid, too.

    Remember Jonathan Gruber?  Apparently the 3 videos I discussed yesterday – showing Gruber repeatedly calling the US public “stupid” – weren’t all of his past “pearls of wisdom” concerning ObamaCare and/or US healthcare policy.  A couple of more have surfaced.

    What does he say in these new “nuggets”? Well, let’s see. In one, he says that the Massachusetts health care system he helped design was a scam from day one and only succeeded because Massachusetts conned the Federal government into paying a big chunk of the cost.  Here’s the “money quote” (pun intentional; material in italics added for clarity):

    “The dirty secret in Massachusetts is the feds paid for our bill, okay?” he [Gruber] said. “In Massachusetts we had a very powerful senator you may know named Ted Kennedy. . . . Ted Kennedy and smart people in Massachusetts had basically figured out a way to sort of rip off the feds for about 400 million dollars a year.”

    In another, he openly mocks a critic of single-payer, government-funded healthcare systems, comparing the critic to an adolescent child.   Nice.  And very indicative of where Gruber lies (second intentional pun) politically.

    Ya know, Gruber sounds to me like your sterotypical arrogant ivory-tower pr!ck who’s never really had much to do with the real world.  If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was a professor at some college in New England who had never really held a job outside academia.  Well, except for those hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars he’s been getting over the past few years for speaking in favor of, performing analysis concerning, and executing various other consulting tasks promoting ObamaCare.

    Ya know, to me it almost looks as if he might just have a conflict of interest in that last, or an ethical problem vis-à-vis MIT policies.  But what do I know?

  • Ever Wonder What Those Who Wrote the ObamaCare Law REALLY Think About Us?

    Well, I’ll let one of them tell you. The clips below are from a guy named Jonathan Gruber – one of the law’s architects, and an economics professor at MIT.

     

     

    He further states his belief that American voters are stupid here (it’s at around 31:00 of an hour-long video – sorry, I can’t find a shorter clip).

     

    And, finally – we have this:

     

     

    Yep. According to one of its authors, ObamaCare was crafted the way it was because its authors thought “the American people are too stupid to understand the difference”.   That explains a lot.

    Oh, and Gruber now says he “regrets” calling the American people “stupid”. Yeah? Well, I have one thing to say to that: “Bullsh!t.”   He doesn’t regret saying that at all.

    What he regrets is getting caught on video telling someone his true opinion. Because it’s on video, he can’t now deny what he actually said or how he actually feels about his fellow citizens.  He regrets being exposed as a Nanny-state Marxist who feels his fellow citizens are too stupid to take care of themselves.  And he also undoubtedly regrets the fact that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – who repeatedly cited his work by-name during the prelude to that middle-of-the-night, “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it” rush to enact ObamaCare – now denies knowing who he is.

    You probably only heard about this guy’s statements recently, if you’ve heard about him at all. That’s because it wasn’t the media that originally found his remarks about the US public. Hell, given the prolonged attachment of the media’s collective lips to the POTUS’s butt during past few years I’d guess they’d have buried it anyway.  And the media is still keeping this mostly quiet today.

    So, who broke the story?  Turns out it was an investment broker who couldn’t keep his health plan during the initial ObamaCare rollout.  He got p!ssed at being baldfaced lied to, and started looking into the background and past public statements of those who wrote the ObamaCare law. See the first link below for details.

    So, we have a monumentally stupid law – which was written the way it was because the people writing it thought American voters were too stupid to notice.  And now they’ve got their butts in a sling because the American voters DID notice – and don’t like being played for fools.  The irony there is simply stunning.  You couldn’t make this sh!t up if you tried.

    Some of these video clips of Gruber have had a way of disappearing from university and/or other public sources (imagine that). So in case that happens again, below are links to some of the original news sources on the matter.

     

    Meet the Mild-Mannered Investment Adviser Who’s Humiliating the Administration Over Obamacare

    Yet Another Video Emerges Of Obamacare Architect Calling Americans ‘Stupid’

    In Third Video, Obamacare Architect Talks About ‘Basic Exploitation’ Of American Voters

     

    “An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!”

  • About Those Terrorists Who “Didn’t” Sneak Across the Southwest Border . . .

    Remember those allegations made by Rep. Duncan Hunter about terrorists coming across the US Southwestern border?  You know, those allegations that the current       group of less-than-truthful persons of irregular parentage running things in DC     Administration claimed – in the words of DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson – were “categorically false”?

    Well, guess what?  It turns out those claims weren’t actually false at all.  Are you surprised the Administration “got it wrong” – again?  And apparently baldfaced lied about the matter?

    Nah, me either.  I’ve already had to get rid of several pair of trousers because they keep p!ssing on my leg and telling me it’s rain.

    While not members of ISIS, the 4 individuals in question were Turkish.  And

    The men initially claimed to be members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front, known by the acronym DHKP/C. The group is a Marxist insurgency that claimed credit for a 2013 suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, last year.

    But U.S. counterterrorism officials said the men were more likely members of the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been battling for Kurdish rights within Turkey for decades, though recently PKK and Turkish leaders have tried to broker a political agreement.

    Both the PKK and DHKP/C are listed by the State Department as terrorist groups.  Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the fact that avowed members of terrorist groups got into the U.S. shows it’s possible to sneak across a porous border.

    So, they’re not ISIS/ISIL terrorists – they’re simply other terrorists.  They only claimed to be members of a group of Marxists that have conducted suicide bomber attacks on a US Embassy, and which is recognized as a terrorist group by the State Department.

    But they’re not ISIS/ISIL.  So I guess to this      group of clueless idiots      Administration that means, “No problem; it’s all good.”

    The four men in question apparently paid a smuggler network $8,000 each to be smuggled into the US.  I’m guessing they weren’t the first to do that.  And I’m also guessing the lies we heard here about them not being terrorists aren’t the only lies we’re going to hear along those lines from this Administration, either.

    The Washington Times had a fairly good article the other day on the subject; the quote above is from that article.  It’s worth reading.

  • Yeah, That Could Explain It

    Perhaps you’ve noticed a certain news story has been missing in the news for the past few days.  I’m talking about the Ebola epidemic and stories about possible cases turning up in the US.

    At first, I thought it had simply been displaced by election news.  After all, the election was big news.  But it’s still missing.

    I think I know why now.  And I think I was wrong.

    Check out the dates on the first of these stories – and then think about when the Ebola stories disappeared (a couple of days before the election, as I recall):

    HERE’S Why Ebola Is No Longer In the News

    Report: Obama Administration Pressured News
    Outlets to Not Report Suspected Ebola Cases

    Oh, and it looks like it’s not just the media that’s subscribing to treating the US public like mushrooms:

    Md. to stop providing updates on Ebola
    investigations, unless cases confirmed

    Yeah, that’s REALLY the way to ensure public trust in government – feed the public bullsh!t, then pressure the media to hide the ugly truth.  Well, I’ve seen that movie once before – around 1967-1968.  I was just a kid at the time, but as I recall it pretty much sucked then.  It sucks just as bad now.

    Sheesh.  What’s next – are we going to see the Surgeon General (or maybe the POTUS) come to a news conference and channel Admiral Felt, yelling at nosy reporters to “Get on the team!”?