It Took America Less Time to Win World War II Than for Obama to Fail to Implement ObamaCare

December 7th, 2013

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After that sneak attack, America, roused to righteous fury, picked itself up, and managed to defeat both Hitler’s Germany and Tojo’s Japan in three and a half years. (We had a large measure of help in defeating Hitler from the British Empire and the Soviet Union, less in defeating Japan.)

More time has passed from the signing of ObamaCare to now than passed between the bombing of Pearl Harbor and VJ-Day:

  • Days from December 7, 1941 to August 14, 1945: 1346 days
  • Days from March 23, 2010 to December 7, 2013: 1355 days

    • Let me make it clear that I’m not pulling a Santorum: I’m not comparing the effects of World War II to the effects of ObamaCare (devastating to our economy thought the latter has been, and will continue to be). What I’m noting is how America’s very effective wartime government managed to accomplish a Herculean task, many of whose subtasks (D-Day, The Manhattan Project) probably exceeded in size and scope all of ObamaCare, in three and a half years, while in the same period of time, Obama’s bloated administration, armed with virtually infinite computing power compared to 1945, has been unable to get a single complex piece of software up and running properly.

    We all know the Obama Administration felt that ObamaCare was (in Vice President Joe Biden’s own immortal words) “a big fucking deal,” his signature achievement. And with as much time as it took America to win World War II, Obama’s oversight of the project has been an unmitigated, miserable failure.

    Obama Pearl Harbor

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    Posted in ObamaCare | 4 Comments »

    Lazy, SuperTiny LinkSwarm for December 6, 2013

    December 6th, 2013

    It’s Friday, and I’m feeling to lazy to put up a real LinkSwarm, so here’s the Mini-Me version:

  • “Anger among Democrats over the rollout of ObamaCare is deep.” It’s nothing compared to the anger among voters…
  • An example of why Rick Santorum wasn’t the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012, and won’t be in 2016.
  • Once again, a super-secret military plane started under Republicans is revealed by a Democratic Administration.
  • Austin Attorney Marc Rosenthal, who helped bankroll the Williamson County Democratic Party, including gave $58,000 in donations to (now ex-) state rep Diana Maldonado, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for “racketeering, conspiracy, bribery, extortion, tampering, and mail fraud.”
  • Charles Barkley rides the New York City subway: “If they never see me again, tell my family I love them.”
  • You know that whole “I’ll never have to buy music ever again” thing? Yeah, not so much.
  • Texans fire head coach Gary Kubiak. It was time. Thy also fired Special Teams coach Joe Marciano, which was many, many years overdue…
  • Man survives two days in air pocket in overturned ship:

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    Posted in Austin, Democrats, Military, ObamaCare | No Comments »

    Nelson Mandela, RIP

    December 5th, 2013

    Given conservatism’s understanding of flawed, immutable human nature, our outlook can tend toward the cynical. (Or, as we like to call it, the realistic.) But every now and then, event turn out somewhat better than we expected. The most peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union was one example, and the reign of the post-Apartheid government of Nelson Mandela, who died today at age 95, was another.

    Conservatives were deeply skeptical of Mandela’s African National Congress due to its close ties to the South African Communist Party at a time when brutal communist regimes were making life hell for the citizens of Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique. SACP was fond of “necklacing” political enemies by placing tires filled with gasoline around their necks and setting them on fire. Conservatives wanted to end Apartheid, but didn’t think sanction or Mandela were the right way to do it.

    Nelson defied our expectations by presiding over a mostly peaceful, mostly legitimate and mostly democratic (and, ineed, far more of any than the average state in Sub-Saharan Africa). South Africa did not descend into civil war like Mozambique, or become an economic basket case like Zimbabwe. For that all the world owes Mandela thanks.

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    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy | No Comments »

    “Taxpayers Are The Fools”

    December 4th, 2013

    Even though this happened in my neck of the woods, I missed this call from a welfare recipient bragging about how much money she got from the government, and have no intention of working:

    This is what the welfare state has wrought on the American underclass.

    This is what the Democratic Party stands for.

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    Posted in Austin, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for December 3, 2013

    December 3rd, 2013

    Some news from before Thanksgiving weekend, some after. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

  • Detroit is eligible for chapter 9 bankruptcy. “Judge Steven Rhodes turned down objections from unions, pension funds and retirees, which, like other creditors, could lose under any plan to solve $18 billion in long-term liabilities.”
  • Missed this earlier: The ObamaCare cancellation-to-enrollment ratio is 50-to-1.
  • Selling ObamaCare door-to-door is not exactly going swimmingly.
  • Colorado’s ObamaCare enrollment numbers are worse than the worst case scenario. Then again, Democratic losses in 2010 (and 2014) are probably worse than the worst-case scenario as well.
  • How the MSM is trying to cover for Obama’s ObamaCare lies and their own complicity in them.
  • How’s that “jobless recovery” coming along? “The number of people on payrolls in the U.S. is still 1.5 million below the number in 2008, even after a 5 year-old rally that has boosted the value of stocks by $14 trillion. A 167% advance of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index during the past 57 months has been driven by reduced costs and record-low borrowing costs boosting corporate profit, analysts say. Employee compensation relative to net corporate profit is at its lowest level since 1966.” To put it in lefty terms: Obama is obviously God’s gift to the 1%.
  • Paul Krugman, idiot. Though to be fair, long-term the Euro probably is doomed…
  • Ultra-liberal DailyKos accuses ultra-liberal cartoonist Ted Rall of being a racist. Rall is a nasty piece of work, and no liberal deserves a free “get out of charges of racism simply for being a liberal free” card, but he happens to be right in this respect. This has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with liberals circling the wagons to protect Obama in the wake of ObamaCare’s massive failure.
  • Non-poor preppy liberal campaign consultant whose mother bought her a house garners over $62,000 of donations by claiming to be poor.
  • The problem with linking to this Charles Davis article on liberal media exploiting intern labor is how the entire piece reeks of Special Snowflake Syndrome. It would be a far more compelling story if Davis didn’t come across as such a self-righteous, self-important douche-bag.
  • “It always cracks me up when I hear lefties like Matthews bemoaning “incivility”, as if their side didn’t invent it, didn’t expand it, and didn’t propagate it at every opportunity. They think all the disgustingly vile rhetoric they’ve hurled continuously at every conservative starting with Goldwater and continuing on through Nixon, then Reagan, Gingrich, Bush, Palin, etc. has been flushed down the memory hole. I think what they mean by “incivility” is really “conservatives talking back”.
  • A question for my readers: Can anyone tell me whether HR992 is good or bad for the taxpayer? On the surface it looks like more underwriting of crony capitalism, but the technicalities lie outside my sphere of expertise.

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch, ObamaCare | No Comments »

    What’s Going On In Ukraine Right Now?

    December 2nd, 2013

    Amidst Thanksgiving weekend festivities (which for me included visiting with family, eating copious amounts of food, shopping for books, and watching the Rockets beat the Nets and Spurs), I kept seeing reports of unrest in Ukraine pop up on my Twitter feed.

    Ukraine’s current president, Viktor Yanukovych, is a toady for Putin’s Moscow, and in that role he rejected a trade deal with the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia. Ukrainians, tired of centuries of Russian domination, were naturally pissed, and took to the streets to protest. Those protests continued to grow during the weekend, with the attendant clashes with police and volleys of tear gas, and even some members of the ruling coalition quitting in protest. Even John Kerry’s ineffectual State Department was forced to issue one of its toothless, pro-forma protests.

    What it boils down to is the latest incarnation of a very old struggle of Ukrainians trying to throw off the yoke of Moscow’s rule. It looked like they had succeeded in the Orange Revolution in 2004-2005, but then Putin’s catspaws managed to slither their way back into power, all part of Russia’s attempt to assert control in its “Near Abroad” (i.e., the other states of the former Soviet Union). Then there’s that little issue of the Soviet Union killing between 4 million and 14 million people in the Holodomor.

    Will Democracy succeed? Never underestimate the willingness of authoritarians (or totalitarians) to murder their own people when push comes to shove. But Yanukovych can only do so much. There’s no love lost between Ukraine’s armed forces and their Russian counterparts, so I sincerely doubt they would back Yanukovych in an actual revolution or civil war.

    Would Russia intervene militarily in Ukraine? I never put anything past Vladamir Putin (remember, he’s almost certainly the guy who ordered the poisoning of Yanukovych’s rival Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin), but invading the Ukraine would probably be a bridge too far for even the squishy EU.

    Recent reports have troops moving in toward the protestors.

    Russia Today has regular updates on the situation. (Note that’s Russia Today, not Ukraine Today, and adjust for bias accordingly.)

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    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy | No Comments »

    The Round Rock Fire Department Would Like You To Avoid Setting Yourself on Fire

    November 28th, 2013

    Over on my other blog, I have a warning from William Shatner not to set yourself on fire frying a turkey.

    Now, thanks to Dwight, we have a more local warning from The Round Rock Fire Department. Take it away, boys!

    The turkey frying warning video is indeed a rich genre…

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    Posted in Austin, Uncategorized, video | No Comments »

    Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Thanksgiving Address

    November 28th, 2013

    Expect slow blogging the rest of the week while I’m giving thanks by stuffing my face, so here’s Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Thanksgiving address.

    “It’s people, not government, who create wealth and provide growth.”

    Quite a contrast with current occupant of the White House…

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    LinkSwarm for November 27, 2013

    November 27th, 2013

    I’m guessing a lot of people will be traveling or furiously cleaning their house today, so here’s a small pre-Thanksgiving LinkSwarm for the distracted:

  • Dear America: In case you didn’t notice in the ObamaCare meltdown, the economy is still screwed.
  • Current estimate for people losing their employer health insurance thanks to ObamaCare: 80 million.
  • Abbott Labs CEO: ObamaCare provides “clear incentives for companies to drop their health care plans and move people onto the exchanges.”
  • Noted right-wing white supremacists Al Sharpton and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter say the Knockout Game is real. (Hat tip Jammie Wearing Fool.
  • Israel is not the only country upset over Obama and Kerry’s Iranian cave-in; the Saudis are pissed, too.
  • The pro-Amnesty lobby thinks they can punish politicians for agreeing with the will of American voters. Fuzzy, feel-good “immigration reform” polls well right up until voters realize what they’ll actually get is illegal alien amnesty.
  • Leander ISD is bankrupting its children.

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Foreign Policy, Jihad, ObamaCare | No Comments »

    Things Are About To Get Really, Really Ugly in Venezuela

    November 26th, 2013

    The Venezuelan Parliament just passed an “enabling law” to give Socialist President Nicolas Maduro dictatorial powers.

    Gee, you know what other Socialist President had his country pass an “Enabling Law” to give him dictatorial powers?

    Go ahead.

    Guess.

    Maduro’s opponents? Not happy.

    Earlier this month, Maduro sent the army to seize electronics store and force them to sell goods below cost, i.e. at the laughable “official exchange rate” of 6.3 bolivars per dollar rather than the real black market rate, which is some eight times higher. (They even tried to get Twitter to block unofficial exchange rates.) And Maduro is looking to loot more stores ahead of the December 8 elections. Given that Hugo Chavez has been hollowing out the country since 1999, I’m not even sure it’s possible for the opposition to win a large enough victory to escape the margin of voter fraud anymore.

    Inflation is running at 54%. Oil prices are at 16 month lows, and the country’s oil production has been declining for a while. That, and the crazy Socialist looting, have sent Venezuela bond prices into a tailspin and sent their interest rates to an all-time high. Crime is also high, with Caracas being the murder capital of the world (yes, even worse than Chicago).

    Maybe that’s why Goldman Sachs has a scheme to help Venezuela swap gold for dollars.

    It’s almost as if Maduro read Atlas Shrugged and saw it as a blueprint rather than a cautionary tale. Imagine Greece, if hyperinflation was just getting started and they didn’t have German taxpayers to bail them out.

    You can decree imaginary exchange rates the same way you can decree that π be set to exactly 3, and the reality will ignore and punish your delusion. Watch inflation skyrocket and business collapse as sellers are unable to buy goods and unwilling to sell at a loss, guaranteeing that a far-from rich country is about to get a whole lot poorer.

    The only question now is whether Venezuela’s economic collapse will bee Argentina bad, or Weimar Germany bad.

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    Posted in Crime, Economics | No Comments »

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