Monday, September 30, 2013

Obama’s Long List of Broken Promises

Obama’s Long List of Broken Promises

The answer to both questions is, I think, no. And it raises a deeper issue: Has any previous president devalued his words quite so much, in quite so many ways? Perhaps, but I rather doubt it.
In order to support my claim, it’s worth taking a stroll down memory lane, to compare what Mr. Obama has said with what he has done. The sheer bandwidth of his broken promises and empty claims is quite extraordinary.
For example, there was his promise not to allow lobbyists to work in his administration. (They have.) His commitment to slash earmarks. (He didn’t.) To be the most transparent presidency in history. (It’s not.) To put an end to “phony accounting.” (It started almost on day one and continues.) And to restore trust in government. (Trust in government is at near-historic lows.) Think, too, about his pledge to seek public financing in the general election. (He didn’t.) And to treat super-PACs as a “threat to democracy.” (He embraced them.)
Then there was his administration’s pledge to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent. (It remained above 8 percent for the longest stretch since the Great Depression.) To create five million new energy jobs alone. (The total number of jobs created in Obama’s first term was roughly one-tenth that figure.) To identify all those “shovel-ready” jobs. (Mr. Obama later chuckled that his much-hyped “shovel-ready projects” were “not as shovel-ready as we expected.”) And to lift two million Americans from poverty. (A record 46 million Americans are living in poverty during the Obama era.)
Let’s not forget the president’s promise to bring down health care premiums by $2,500 for the typical family (they went up) … allow Americans to keep the health care coverage they currently have (many can’t) … refuse to fund abortion via the Affordable Care Act (it did) … to respect religious liberties (he has violated them) … and the insistence that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was not a tax (it is).
There was also Mr. Obama’s pledge to stop the rise of the oceans. (It hasn’t.) To “remake the world” and to “heal the planet.” (Hardly.) To usher in a “new beginning” based on “mutual respect” with the Arab and Islamic world and “help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East.” (Come again?) To punish Syria if it crossed the “red line” of using chemical weapons. (The “red line” was crossed earlier this year–and nothing of consequence happened.) That as president “I don’t bluff.” (See the previous sentence on Syria.) And of course the much-ballyhooed Russian reset. (Tensions between Russia and the United States are increasing and examples of Russia undermining U.S. interests are multiplying.)
And let’s not forget Mr. Obama’s promise to bring us together. (He is the most polarizing president in the history of Gallup polling.) Or his assurance to us that he would put an end to the type of politics that “breeds division and conflict and cynicism.” (All three have increased during the Obama presidency.) And his counsel to us to “resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.” (Remind me again whose campaign allies accused Mitt Romney of being responsible for the cancer death of a steelworker’s wife.)
I’m sure people could add to this list, but there’s enough here to establish a pattern. Even if you stipulate that politicians often make claims they can’t keep–that some are the product of cynical deception and others the product of unforeseen circumstances–Mr. Obama is in a category all his own.
Does it matter? I think so, in part because I don’t believe it’s good to have as president someone for whom words have no objective meaning and who believes he can construct his own narrative to fit his own needs. But I also think we’re seeing an accretion occur. It’s happening later than I would have hoped, but the public does seem to be tuning out the president. The latest pivot to the economy–has that pivot occurred a half-dozen or a dozen times before?–is meaningless. Nothing has happened before; why should anything happen now?
Mr. Obama talks, and he talks, and he talks. My how he loves to talk. But his words don’t translate into anything real. And eventually that does take a toll.
In the 2008 campaign, while criticizing his opponents, Mr. Obama said in a somewhat exasperated tone, “I mean, words mean something.” For most of us they do. But not, it appears, for the president of the United States.

Greek Tragedy in Washington: Obama, Obamacare, Republicans, Ted Cruz and the Shutdown

Greek tragedy is all about hubris — overweening pride and how it brings men down. Hubris could be the story of the coming week in Washington but not for the reasons most think.
As the whole world knows, this city is fixated on a standoff between the president and Congressional Republicans (all in the House, some in the Senate) over Obamacare. As of late Sunday night, reports were that Congressional Democrats and the president were refusing to compromise or to even talk. “Running out the clock” was the Drudge Report’s overnight lead headline about the Democrats’ stance.
The Democrats clearly believe they don’t need to compromise. If a government shutdown comes, the media will blame the GOP – a perfect set up for their 2014 drive to take back the House.
After all, the GOP took the blame not just with the media but with the public at large during the 1995-6 stand off between Congressional Republicans and the Clinton Administration. But in three key ways, today is entirely different from the mid-1990s. And these differences all have roots in a hubris that could produce very different results.
The first difference is the reason for the shutdown. In the mid-90s, the standoff was about overall spending, an important issue, to be sure, but not at that time as intensely compelling Obamacare is now. Despite the president’s taunting characterization of GOP intent – wanting, he says, to keep millions from receiving health insurance — Obamacare is deeply unpopular throughout the country and has been from the first.
Deep unpopularity was why in 2009 the White House had to resort to not quite legitimate methods to ram the bill through a Senate that it controlled. Those tactics – including hounding Alaska senator Ted Stevens out of office on bogus charges – are among the reasons the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare’s official title) has never enjoyed full legitimacy.
And if anything, its legitimacy has declined since its passage. Nancy Pelosi’s infamous “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,” looks more prescient and prideful by the day. The Catholic bishops supported the law’s passage, only to find that is endangered core tenants of the faith. Private sector unions supported it, only to find that its sloppy design is forcing full-time employees to go part time, destroying the 40-hour workweek for tens of millions of Americans. Many major corporations supported it, only to be surprised that the president’s “if you like it, you can keep it” pledge about their existing health insurance plans was in practice untenable.
Difference number two from 1995-6 is lead spokespeople. Much to the disgust of many in his own party, Ted Cruz has gone on point in the Senate. As he demonstrated on yesterday’s Meet the Press, Cruz is a far more talented spokesperson than any the GOP fielded two decades ago. Much of the party is ticked with him and perhaps with reason. But since Ronald Reagan left the White House, no Republican has stood up to the kind of questioning to which David Gregory subjected Cruz and come out so well. The Texas senator won every point and did so without a moment’s hesitation or dropping his smile. Democrats have come cockily to assume that with the mainstream media as air cover, they could dominate any issue battlefield. No more. There are other young GOP senators and governors like Cruz. The party is finding voice. It can make its case even under media fire.
The third difference from the mid-1990s is that this Tuesday the long-awaited Obamacare health exchanges go live online. Over the next three months tens of millions of Americans will log on to sign up. For them and, by word of mouth, tens of millions more, the exchanges will become the first material sign of whether Obamacare is what the president has promised or the GOP has warned about.
Democrats may have built a trap for themselves. The launch of Obamacare could prove an even bigger online fiasco than Mitt Romney’s infamous Election Day get-out-the-vote super-program, Project Orca. Everyone presumes that Team Obama isn’t as clueless about the web as was Romney’s outfit. The hubris of White House and congressional Democrats is another matter. Without their realizing it, their intransigence even to the proposed one-year delay in implementation represents a huge bet on this software package will work the first time or soon thereafter. Even the package’s developer (who has warned that using it could prove a “third-world experience”) seems to fear that it won’t.
Will this week prove a Greek tragedy? Stay tuned.
 

Republicans, fix bayonets!

After his narrow defeat by Gerald Ford at the Kansas City convention in 1976, Ronald Reagan was seen as a has-been.
Came the Carter-Torrijos treaties of 1977, however, which gave away the Panama Canal, and the old cowboy strapped on his guns:
 
 
“We bought it. We paid for it. It’s ours. And we’re gonna keep it.”
America loved it. Bill Buckley said we must recognize reality and transfer the canal. GOP Senate leader Howard Baker was the toast of the city as he led 16 Republicans to vote with Jimmy Carter. The treaties were approved.
Reagan’s consolation prize? The presidency of the United States.
Voters in New Hampshire in 1980, remembering his lonely stand, rewarded Reagan with a decisive victory over George H. W. Bush, who had defeated Reagan in Iowa. When Howard Baker came in, he was greeted as “Panama Howie,” and did not survive the primary.
The Republican war over whether to bow to the seemingly inevitable and fund Obamacare is a Panama Canal issue. How one votes here may decisively affect one’s career.
Ted Cruz may have, as Richard Nixon used to say, “broken his pick” in the Republican caucus. Yet, on Obamacare, his analysis is right, his instincts are right, his disposition to fight is right.
These are more important matters than the news that he is out of the running for the Mr. Congeniality award on Capitol Hill.
If Obamacare is funded, the subsidies starting in January will constitute a morphine drip from which America’s health-care system will not recover. If not stopped now, Obamacare is forever.
Senate Republicans should be asking themselves why Cruz and Rand Paul, two newcomers to the Senate of decidedly different temperaments, are being talked of as credible candidates in the presidential primaries of 2016.
Answer: Both are clear in their convictions, unapologetic about them and willing to break some china to achieve them. And that part of America upon which the GOP depends most is increasingly frustrated and angry with those who run the national party.
Order Pat Buchanan’s brilliant and prescient books at WND’s Superstore.
Americans don’t want a dignified surrender on Obamacare. They want someone to drive a stake through Obamacare.
And the question that is going to be answered in coming weeks is: Is the GOP willing to shove its whole stack into the middle of the table, for a showdown over Obamacare? Or will the House GOP in the end cast the decisive vote to make Obamacare permanent?
For, as columnist Terry Jeffrey writes, “[M]ake no mistake. If Obamacare is funded and implemented, it will be because Republican members of Congress decided to do it.”
As Terry notes, Congress has absolute power over the public purse. Article I of the Constitution says, “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”
The law authorizing President Obama to spend more money for Obamacare expires Sept. 30. If the House refuses to vote for any bill that contains new Obamacare funding, Obamacare is dead.
Thus the Republican House controls the fate of Obamacare.
But if we don’t fund Obamacare, comes the Republican wail, Harry Reid will let the government shut down, the American people will blame us, and all of our pundits say we can’t win this fight.
For sure you cannot win if you do not fight.
But if a Democratic Senate refuses to pass the House-passed continuing resolution funding the government, because Obamacare is not in the bill, who is shutting down the government?
If Obama vetoes any continuing resolution funding the government that does not contain Obamacare, who is shutting down the government then?
Who is putting the U.S. economy at risk to protect a bollixed program the American people do not want and Congress would never approve if they voted on it today?
What House Republicans have lacked is not courage, but a political and communications strategy.
Having provided a continuing resolution to fund the government, except Obamacare, the House should next begin passing CRs – one for each department. A CR to fund defense and veterans affairs. A CR to fund state, the CIA and Homeland Security. A CR for justice, transportation, energy, etc. One every day.
Would Harry Reid refuse to fund the U.S. Army and Navy unless John Boehner’s House stuffs Obamacare into the defense budget?
Do Republicans really feel incapable of winning this argument?
Are Republicans so tongue-tied they cannot convince America of the truth: They have already voted to fund the government.
If Republicans capitulate and lose this battle, and this unwanted mess passes into law, there is something deeply wrong with the party.
Two weeks ago, a brave Congress, listening to America, stood up and told Obama: Your red lines be damned; we’re not voting for war on Syria.
Now House Republicans need to tell the country: Come hell or high water, we’re not voting to fund Obamacare. We will pass a CR on everything else in the budget, but Obamacare is not coming out of this House alive.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/republicans-fix-bayonets/#OcDMM9TWdguFEa1E.99

A recent history of hate-crime hoaxes


Written by .
 
hateRacism and hate are real. Hate crimes do happen — some violent, some just threatening.
But unfortunately, there is no shortage of wannabe heroes — who in most cases have never suffered discrimination — actively undermining the cause by committing fake hate crimes, often with the idea of drawing attention to an issue.
The Daily Caller had a piece this week on a recent and especially pernicious hoax at Oberlin College, perpetrated by an overzealous, outspokenly liberal Obama campaigner and his friend. The two young men terrorized their campus with racist graffiti, flyers, and emails sent from a fake address using the name of the university’s president, at one point placing a flag with a swastika in a campus building. The incidents received national news coverage.
Incredibly, once the hoaxers had been discovered, suspended, and removed from campus, university administrators concealed their knowledge that it had been a hoax, leaving other students (and Americans in general) to fear that their campus was a far more dangerous and hostile place than it actually was.
Fake hate crimes are sometimes politically motivated, designed to get a reaction from people and convince them that hate is a really big problem — this is usually done by liberals, but in at least one prominent case (see below) it was done by a conservative. In other cases, the perps have other motives, such as financial fraud or a need for evidence to bolster a discrimination lawsuit.
Fake hate crimes seem especially common on college campuses, where a reaction is almost guaranteed and where the perps are naive enough about the ways of the world to think they can get away with it.
Here’s a brief and partial recent history of hate-crime hoaxes, culled from various online sources including trendsinhate.com (which contains accounts of several real hate crimes as well) and fakehatecrimes.org:
 

Author Of Book On 2012 Election: ‘Without Media Bias, America Would Vote Like Texas Or Kentucky’

Author Of Book On 2012 Election: ‘Without Media Bias, America Would Vote Like Texas Or Kentucky’



On Tuesday, David Freddoso, author of Spin Masters, How the Media Ignored the Real News and Helped Reelect Barack Obama, joined the hosts of Fox & Friends to discuss pro-Democratic media bias in 2012 and beyond. The author detailed the case against the media in this interview and in a recent column for the New York Post in which he quotes a political scientist who attributes much of the nation’s support for Democratic politicians to the pro-Democratic coverage of politics in the mainstream media. Without that biased media, the author and the political scientist say, the nation’s voting patterns would more closely mirror any typical red state.

Freddoso opened by admonishing Steve Kroft and CBS after the reporter admitted that the president appeared on CBS because he knows they will not “play gotcha” with him. “It’s amazing,” Freddoso said.
“It just looks like CBS has a dog in that race,” Steve Doocy said.
“My old boss, Bob Novak, used to say, ‘a reporter is someone who would sell his soul for a story,’” Freddoso continued. “It’s just that when the story would make Barack Obama look bad or his presidency look like a failure, there is a sudden total lack of journalistic curiosity and unwillingness to sell one’s soul for a story.”
“Really big stories like Benghazi became non-stories,” he added. “Editorial judgments were made to play these things down.”
Freddoso noted that coverage of the unemployment crisis in Obama’s first term was also poor. “We always hear about ‘McJobs’ when there is a Republican president,” he observed. “With Obama, you have that going on super-sized and, instead of covering the fact that part-time work is replacing full-time work, wages have been going down – not since the crisis, which wasn’t Obama’s fault, but since the recovery started – is his recovery.”
Freddoso said that the press even played an active role in tarring Republican candidates. He cited one episode in which George Stephanopoulos brought up an “imaginary contraception ban that no one was advocating and nobody ever supported” in a Republican presidential primary debate. That moment helped to create the narrative that GOP politicians want to ban contraception, in spite of the fact that no such legislation was ever proposed.
Doocy closed by quoting Freddoso in a recent column he wrote for the New York Post. There, Freddoso quoted UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose who claimed that, “without media bias, America would vote about like Texas or Kentucky.”
Watch the clip below via Fox News Channel:

> >Follow Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) on Twitter

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/author-of-book-on-2012-election-without-media-bias-america-would-vote-like-texas-or-kentucky/

Sunday, September 29, 2013

How Liberal Media Obfuscate Obamacare’s Individual Mandate

How Liberal Media Obfuscate Obamacare’s Individual Mandate

by John Hinderaker in Media, Media Bias, Obamacare
 
A knowledgeable reader points out that Obama administration shills in the press are peddling misinformation about how Obamacare’s individual mandate works, or doesn’t:
Kabuki dance, or just stupidity? I often cannot tell when it comes to the Obama administration and their MSM flacks in discussions of Obamacare. In particular, the focus on the individual mandate has taken on a surreal character both among the pols and in the MSM. The controversy about “delaying” the mandate to purchase insurance has got the left in a tizzy — because, in theory at least, the individual mandate forcing the young and healthy into Obamacare exchanges at premiums well above their actual health care risk and costs is essential to making the exchanges economically feasible. The young and healthy, by overpaying, subsidize the low premiums charged to those with preëxisting conditions. That’s the whole point; without the mandate the whole scheme falls apart.
This is a key aspect of all government health care schemes; Hillary Clinton acknowledged as much in 1993.
So today two supposedly “wonky” MSM mouthpieces, one in the New York Times, the other in the Washington Post, write detailed explanations of all this. But wait — don’t they know that by the terms of the ACA law, the mandate to buy insurance canNOT be enforced? The law itself specifically forbids any enforcement action to recover the mandate’s “penalty”!! In effect, there is NO mandate at all — it’s a pose, a trick, a sleight-of-hand built into the law. Power Line readers certainly should be aware of this: PL was on top of this point 3 ½ years ago!
And yet today’s MSM “wonks” fail to mention that the law already “guts” the mandate!
For a liberal, the “wonk” bar is set low. If you can add and subtract, you’re in.
This is a continuing pattern…this feature is never mentioned. But it is intentional, we can be highly certain of that. The plan all along was to create the exchanges to serve a powerful constituency, entice them into them…and intentionally make them fail, to create the political pre-conditions for nationalizing health care through single payer.
Now it is possible that many in the MSM do not understand this point. But the two “wonks” writing today have no excuse. Eighteen months ago the original MSM “wonk,” Ezra Klein, let the cat out of the bag by openly revealing that the mandate is unenforceable:
…the Affordable Care Act doesn’t include an actual enforcement mechanism for the individual mandate. If you refuse to pay it, the Internal Revenue Service can’t throw you in jail, dock your wages or really do anything at all. This leads to one of the secrets of Obamacare: Perhaps the best deal in the bill is to pay the mandate penalty year after year and only buy insurance once you get sick. To knowingly free ride, in other words. In that world, the mandate acts as an option to buy insurance at a low price when you need it.
[Emphasis added] The logic is impeccable, except that you don’t even have to “pay the mandate penalty year after year”…and they can’t make you!
But here’s what’s surprising: Sarah Kliff of the Post is Klein’s colleague on “Wonk Blog”…and even more surprising? Annie Lowrey of the Times? She is his wife!!!
So they MUST know about this aspect of Obamacare, yet choose to obscure it.
Unbelievable. But then, everything about Obamacare, and, indeed, anything this administration touches just reeks of dishonesty, disingenuousness and fraud, and the MSM propaganda wing is only too glad to go along.
Ill-informed or mendacious? The perennial question, when it comes to the liberal media. In any event, the evidence is persuasive that Obamacare was designed to fail.
 

The Lessons of History: Kristallnacht in Egypt

The Lessons of History: Kristallnacht in Egypt

To embrace the Muslim Brotherhood is to endorse a direct descendant of the Nazi Party.

by
Hans A. von Spakovsky

As the military (with the support of secular groups that don’t want an Islamist state) battles the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Americans argue over how to react, we should look back at history to understand why we should support the military as the lesser of two evils and hope for its success. Those who know the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and see the murderous attacks it has launched on the homes, businesses, schools, and churches of Coptic Christians, who represent about 10 percent of the population, will recognize that we have seen this type of behavior before.
The Brotherhood is simply using the same tactics and ideology of the political party that it allied itself with in the 1930s and 40s: the Nazi Party. What is happening to the Coptic Christians being beaten, kidnapped, and killed all over Egypt is similar to what happened to Jews in Germany during Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, when Jews were killed and beaten and their homes, stores, schools, and synagogues ransacked, looted, and demolished in Germany and Austria.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Sheikh Hassan al-Banna, who was a great admirer of Adolf Hitler and who formed an alliance with the Nazis. The Brotherhood helped distribute translated copies of Mein Kampf and other Nazi propaganda. The ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood is eerily similar to Nazi fascism, including its ultimate objective of world conquest and a new caliphate. The only difference is it believes in the supremacy of Islam instead of the supremacy of the Aryan race.
The Nazis even helped fund the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 against the Jews and British in Palestine, which was led by Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, and one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was al-Husseini who met with Hitler in 1941 and helped augment the traditional Arab hatred of Jews with plans for a genocidal campaign against Jews.
The fascist origins of the Muslim Brotherhood are fully ingrained in everything it does. Its hatred for Jews has migrated into a hatred of all non-Muslims, particularly Christian Arabs. In the Muslim Brotherhood’s eyes, Coptic Egyptians are traitors to their race and the only true religion, Islam. Many Americans refuse to understand that jihadists like the Brotherhood do not accept any separation between church and state — the only acceptable government is a Muslim theocratic state based on Sharia law.
There is another parallel to Nazi Germany in the situation in Egypt that Americans should also keep in mind. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were democratically elected in the 1932 elections just like Mohamed Morsi was in 2012. Hitler then set out to destroy Germany’s democracy and make himself and the Nazi Party its supreme ruler. Morsi has spent the past year taking the same type of steps, slowly throttling his opposition and media critics, and working to make his formally banned fascist party, the Muslim Brotherhood, sovereign over all of Egypt.
Just like Hitler and the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood wants full dictatorial control of the country and the elimination of Jews, Christians, and all non-Muslims. There is no question that if they can gain control of the military, they will do everything possible to prepare for and launch a war to destroy Israel. That is a fundamental tenet of their ideology.
Many forget that Hitler had a very uneasy relationship initially with the German military. It was the only viable force in Germany that could have deposed Hitler and the Nazis as they started to consolidate power. But the military never did so and Hitler acted quickly to take control of the military to prevent any such opposition from developing. It was only late in the war in 1944 that a small number of senior military officers finally tried to assassinate Hitler to get rid of him and end the war.
But what if the German military had acted much earlier? Hitler in essence consolidated his power in the two years from 1932 to 1934 through a complicated series of actions, including plots like the Reichstag fire, the Night of the Long Knives, and the passage of various laws that effectively swept away all of his opposition. If the German military had crushed Hitler, his SA Brownshirts, the Hitler Youth, the SS, and all of the other Nazi Party affiliates in 1933, perhaps millions of people would not have died in a genocidal war and Nazi concentration camps. The history of Europe might have been completely different.
Fortunately, the Egyptian military has acted before Morsi and his own Muslim Brotherhood Brownshirts had the full opportunity to consolidate their power. Morsi and his clan are thugs with views no different than those who stood in the docks at Nuremberg from 1945 to 1949. If we can learn anything from the history of the 1930s and Nazi Germany, we should be hoping that the Egyptian military is successful in crushing the new version of the Nazis in the Middle East. That is the only way that a real democracy will ever have a chance to be born in Egypt.
Even if a western-style democracy never takes hold, one can hardly dispute that Egypt was much more peaceful under Hosni Mubarak despite the human rights failings of his government and military. Things will be much worse if the Muslim Brotherhood consolidates its power. While there has always been hostility by some Egyptian Muslims towards the Coptics, there was an exponentially sharp increase in attacks on Coptic Christians during the one year that Morsi was in power.
As the Coptic Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria has said, Morsi was Islamicizing Egypt and no doubt would have prosecuted all non-Muslims under blasphemy laws as he consolidated power. The Muslim Brotherhood is using the Coptics in the same way that Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats. In fact, the Facebook page of Morsi’s Islamist party, the Freedom and Justice Party, blames the pope for the “removal of the first elected Islamist president” and incites the burning of Coptic churches. The pervasive bloodshed throughout the former land of the Pharaohs against the Coptics over the last month is, in many respects, a copycat Kristallnacht instigated by the Brotherhood.
Ultimately, the interests of the United States in this region are best served by a policy focused on stability. Wouldn’t we rather see a relatively peaceful Egypt even under military rule with no interest in attacking Israel or supporting terrorist attacks than some democratically elected dictator (one man-one vote-one time) hell-bent on eradicating Jews and other blasphemous non-believers from the face of the Earth? Is there really some strategic utility in supporting — particularly financially — Egyptians who want to impose an eighth century, barbaric, antidemocratic Islamic theocracy on its population? To embrace the Muslim Brotherhood is to endorse a takeover of Egypt by a direct descendent of the Nazi Party. The United States, Egypt, and the world deserve far better.
———————-
This piece was written independently, and is not sanctioned by the Heritage Foundation.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/kristallnacht-in-egypt/?singlepage=true

How President Obama is flouting Obamacare

How President Obama is flouting Obamacare

More reasons to delay and rewrite this ill-conceived law


  • Margot Lee, a volunteer for Enroll America's Get Covered America campaign, organizes her materials before canvassing the neighborhood informing prospective health insurance consumers about new insurance possibilities available through the Affordable Care Act, in Englewood, New Jersey, U.S., on Saturday, July 27, 2013. The initiative aims to use tactics honed in U.S. President Barack Obama's presidential campaigns to ensure success for his signature health-care overhaul.
Margot Lee, a volunteer for Enroll America's Get Covered America campaign, organizes her materials before canvassing the neighborhood informing prospective health insurance consumers about new insurance possibilities available through the Affordable Care Act, in Englewood, New Jersey, U.S., on Saturday, July 27, 2013. The initiative aims to use tactics honed in U.S. President Barack Obama's presidential campaigns to ensure success for his signature health-care overhaul. (Michael Nagle )
Democrats strong-armed Obamacare into law three years ago. Now they're busy flouting it.
The mandate that employers provide insurance next year or pay a penalty, as the law requires? Delayed for at least a year.
The law's dictate that people applying for federal subsidies to buy insurance provide proof that they're eligible for the government aid? Scaled back.
 
Sharp limits on Americans' out-of-pocket costs for health care? Suspended for a year.
Providing members of Congress and more than 10,000 staff members with federal health care subsidies that the law does not allow? Done, via a deal brokered by President Barack Obama.
And on and on.
The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is a hugely complex law that sets up online health insurance marketplaces, requires people to have coverage or pay penalties, and doles out subsidies and incentives to nearly everyone in health care. Doctors, hospitals and insurers have spent large sums to gear up for its requirements. Employers are mulling: Hire? Fire? Cut workers' hours?
Millions of Americans, that is, stand to gain or lose from how this law is enforced — with the Obama administration bending that enforcement in ways that test, and arguably exceed, the boundaries of lawful conduct.
Every time the White House undercuts one provision of Obamacare, there is a massive ripple effect on other provisions. It's generally a zero-sum game: When someone gains, someone else loses. Example: When employers are relieved of their mandate to provide insurance, taxpayers risk having to subsidize more of those companies' employees.
The administration asserts that it can make these changes under the president's broad executive authority. Yet critics make a compelling argument that the president is stretching the limits. Former federal appellate Judge Michael McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, writes in The Wall Street Journal about a different sort of mandate: the mandate in Article II of the Constitution that the president "'shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.' This is a duty, not a discretionary power. ... As the Supreme Court wrote long ago (Kendall v. United States, 1838), allowing the president to refuse to enforce statutes 'would be clothing the president with a power to control the legislation of Congress, and paralyze the administration of justice.'"
Like most issues of presidential authority, this isn't cut and dried. Presidents do have broad discretion on how laws are enforced. But they're on shaky ground when they decide whether to enforce a law. It's not hard to understand why: Imagine the outcry if President Mitt Romney refused to enforce, say, Obamacare.
Granted, any president may decline to enforce statutes he believes are unconstitutional. But Obama is making no such claim here. Basically, he is admitting that parts of law are impossible to enforce on the deadlines imposed by Congress — deadlines he signed into law. He's also admitting he doesn't want to have Congress make these changes, for fear that if lawmakers get their mitts on this unpopular program, they would at least debate far more extensive changes than he'd like.
 
Congressional Democrats, and some Republicans, may agree with the numerous delays, changes and special favors. But the president invites chaos when he picks which parts of Obamacare to enforce, and which, in retrospect, he has decided are unworkable or unwise.
In a recent news conference, Obama acknowledged that congressional modification of the law is preferable to these White House fiats: "In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up (House Speaker John Boehner) and say, 'You know what? This is a tweak that doesn't go to the essence of the law. ... Let's make a technical change of the law.' That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do, but we're not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to, quote-unquote, 'Obamacare.'''
Tweaks? Obama isn't making tweaks. He's trying to circumvent major flaws that began flaring when the law was enacted. Hence the many carve-outs, delays and special deals that have been piling up since he added his signature to Obamacare on March 23, 2010.
The president crusaded for this law and has embraced its nickname. But he did not write the law. Congress did. Major changes are necessary — he has stipulated by his actions that this law as constituted cannot work — and Congress should legislate them for his review.
Bottom line: Let's delay and rewrite this ill-conceived law. Congress need not start from scratch. Lawmakers can build on what all of us have learned from three years of painful trial and error. Three years of attempting, but failing, to make this clumsy monstrosity work for the American people.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-08-18/opinion/ct-edit-obamacare-0818-jm-20130818_1_health-care-president-obama-ill-conceived-law

Patterson: United Auto Workers fairy tales

Patterson: United Auto Workers fairy tales

Mike Patterson
Once upon a time, in Chattanooga a young girl made her way to work, picking flowers to add to her basket of posies which she plucked with fingers and cheeks so rosy.
“Where are you going,” came a sudden voice from the shadows, “on such a bright day as this?”
“Just to work, kind sir,” she answered, “and off I must go or my shift I will miss.”
“You don’t want to go there,” said the voice with a growl. “Not without my help.” And he stepped from the bush as she let out a yelp. “So you work at the factory,” said the half beast/half man, “toiling on the line of assembly for the company plan.”
“That is my job,” said she. “Which I do every day, and for which I’m rewarded with benefits and pay.”
“So you believe,” said he, “a bill you’ve been sold, bundled in a bow with the lies you’ve been told. The truth is your superiors design to oppress, to use and abuse, which crimes I can redress. Bring you with me to your factory, and I can bargain for you collectively.” He squinted his red eyes at her. “More pay you will see and benefits too, will be your reward for paying my due.”
“Actually,” said Volksmaiden, “entry-level workers at Volkswagen AG make almost exactly what comparable workers get at unionized General Motors.”
“In addition,” she continued, “the President’s signature health care law has undermined your argument to be able to provide me with superior health benefits. In fact, three major labor bosses have written a letter to Congressional leaders complaining that the legislation they supported has now made the type of health plans that unions negotiate ‘unsustainable.’”
“Well,” stuttered the beast, “what I can promise to thee for accompanying me is peace of mind and job security.”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” replied Volksmaiden. “According to WorkplaceChoice.org, the unionized Big Three Detroit auto companies have shed hundreds of thousands of jobs in the last dozen years, in large part because of burdensome union work rules, while non-union factories like we have here in Chattanooga have created thousands of jobs throughout the South.”
“Uh, uh … OK, it’s true,” growled the beast. “It’s not for your benefit I am here, you see. It’s the King, the King! Who’s hungry for fees!”
“Tell Bob, no thanks,” said Volksmaiden. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” she said, “my ride is here; it’s a Passat, driven by my grandmother. It was Car of the Year, you know, according to Motor Trend. A success, Mr. Wolf, that for you spells….
…The End.”
Matt Patterson is editor-in-chief of Workplacechoice.org.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/aug/21/patterson-united-auto-workers-fairy-tales/?opinionfreepress

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Climate Countdown: D-Day Today

Climate Countdown: D-Day Today

by Steven Hayward in Climate

As mentioned yesterday, the IPCC today began releasing its next major assessment report, starting with the Summary for Policy Makers Headline Writers, but withholding the actual 2,000-page report on the state of climate science until Monday. Just a quick perusal of the 36-page SPM this morning shows a number of refinements and changes from the 2007 IPCC report, but it will take a while to figure out what they all mean. Matt Ridley noted in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago that some of the changes and refinements to key charts and schematic summaries make it hard to match up this report with previous reports. More on these later today or tomorrow perhaps.
All of the talk in the media over the last few weeks about the pressure politicians have brought on how the SPM will treat the unexpected/unpredicted/unexplained 15-year pause in warming makes clear that the IPCC has become a wholly political exercise, as no one in the media seems to be asking the question—what does the body of the main science report say about the pause? Shouldn’t the findings of the main report, not yet leaked, be reflected in the SPM, and not the wishes of governments? That’s what we’ll aim to find out when we get our hands on the expected 2,000-page text Monday.
That’s if we can figure out anything from the 2,000 pages. The BBC story out Tuesday about the imminent report buries the lede in the last paragraph, where it quotes Dutch scientist Arthur Petersen:
“It is a major feat that we have been able to produce such a document which is such an adequate assessment of the science. That being said, it is virtually unreadable!”
Oh goody. Petersen is unfortunately right about this up to a point. I suspect you could hide Jimmy Hoffa’s corpse in the main IPCC report, but there’s still some ways of delving into it that should be revealing.
Meanwhile, here’s one chart from Britain’s Met Office—a key node in climate world—that appears not to have been included in the SPM, along with observations on what is going on from the Met Office.
 

Nairobi horror signals terrorism may now be an American export

Nairobi horror signals terrorism may now be an American export

As details emerge from Nairobi, especially on the identities and stories of the terrorists who are alleged to be American, the public in the United States is going to need clear answers to some very hard questions.
The families of the victims in Kenya will also want to know how America has turned into a jihadist-exporting country.
“We received permission to disclose the names of our mujahideen inside #Westgate,” al Shabab terrorist tweeted Sunday.
The Somali terrorist group claimed that their murder squad included Ahmed Mohamed Isse, 22, “native” of St. Paul, Minn., Abdifatah Osman Keenadiid, 24, of Minneapolis, and Gen Mustafe Noorudiin, 27, of Kansas City, Mo.
In May, four Minnesota men were sentenced to prison for helping recruit young men in Minnesota to travel to Somalia and fight for al-Shabab.
Investigators believe about 20 young, ethnic Somali men left Minnesota from 2007 to 2009 to go to Somalia to join the African franchise of al Qaeda.
Three of the men sentenced in May who had cooperated with investigators were each sentenced to three years and a fourth man was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
"These defendants, by providing material support to a designated terrorist organization, broke both the law and the hearts of family members across the Twin Cities," U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press in a May story, but the trial and sentencing received little media play.
You can be assured it will now, as will the identities of the rest of the missing Minnesotans and all who aided in their radicalization.
In 2006, the late John Updike published his 22nd novel, "Terrorist," which is the story of how one young American became radicalized and absorbed into a terrorist organization.
A society as open as ours, and with many malls as vulnerable as Nairobi's Westgate shopping center in every city of any size, has got to expect that eventually the same sort of horror will come here.
The young radicals on their killing spree in Kenya have stories as detailed as Updike's fictional would-be terrorist from New Jersey, Ahmad Mulloy. Updike's teenager-turned-terrorist was guided by another fictional character, Shaikh Rashid.
For each of the real life murderers, there is a chain-of-custody of their malign beliefs. Good journalists in the Twin Cities will verify if the claims of al Shabab are true, and if they are, they will start digging.
Are the four men in federal prison responsible at least in part for this awful carnage in Kenya? If so, will we be extraditing them to Kenya to face the justice system there, and the consequences of their counseling of the American teens-turned-killers.
Perhaps these four men have nothing to do with the three said to be on the killing spree in Nairobi. Perhaps it is all al Shabab propaganda.
But journalism's job is to find out the truth, and to make sure the story is told and patterns detected so that everyone, especially law enforcement in partnership with patriotic Somali immigrants and responsible Muslim imams, work to prevent this from happening again.
The carnage is horrible and the aftermath will be terrible to look at, much less examine in detail. But it has to be done. Watch and see if the Minneapolis Star Tribune wins the Pulitzer in front of it for telling us where these young killers came from and how they turned out so terribly, terribly cruel.
HUGH HEWITT, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
 
http://washingtonexaminer.com/nairobi-horror-signals-terrorism-may-now-be-an-american-export/article/2536217

What never? Well, hardly never

What never? Well, hardly never

by Paul Mirengoff in Barack Obama, Congress, History, Obamacare

On September 18, President Obama told the Business Roundtable:
You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt used to extort a president of a governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt.
Obama was referring to Republican attempts to use the debt ceiling to gain leverage in the struggle over Obamacare.
Obamacare does, of course, have something to do with the debt. But that aside, is it true that past Congresses have never used the debt ceiling in order to get their way on non-budgetary issues?
No it is not true. Indeed, Obama’s assertion is so untrue that Glenn Kessler, the “Fact Checker” at the Washington Post gives it four Pinocchios.
It turns out that Congress has been doing what Obama says it has never done since 1973. That year, led by Ted Kennedy and Walter Mondale, the Senate sought to make a campaign finance reform bill a condition of raising the debt ceiling.
After that, according to a study by Linda Kowalcky and Lance LeLoup, this practice became a pattern. Congress used the debt ceiling, or threats related thereto, to push for major changes in social security, an end to bombing in Cambodia, allowing prayer in public school, ending school busing to achieve integration, and so forth.
In the period from 1978 through 1987 alone, 25 non-germane amendments were added to debt ceiling legislation. Most of the amendments failed, but not all of them. In 1980, Congress used the debt ceiling to force Jimmy Carter to accept the repeal of an oil import fee that would have raised gas prices.
In any event, Obama’s statement was about attempts to use the debt ceiling for non-debt related purposes, not successes. His statement isn’t just mistaken, it is blatantly false.
Ignorance alone cannot explain Obama’s false statement. To be that far off-base, one must have a willful disregard for the truth.
 

Obamacare Will Increase Health Spending By $7,450 For A Typical Family of Four

Obamacare Will Increase Health Spending By $7,450 For A Typical Family of Four

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26:  Ron Kirby holds a ...
Ron Kirby holds a sign while marching in protest of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on March 26, 2012 in Washington, DC. (Image credit: Getty Images North America via @daylife)
It was one of candidate Obama’s most vivid and concrete campaign promises. Forget about high minded (some might say high sounding) but gauzy promises of hope and change. This candidate solemnly pledged on June 5, 2008: “In an Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year….. We’ll do it by the end of my first term as President of the United States.” Unfortunately, the experts working for Medicare’s actuary have (yet again[1]) reported that in its first 10 years, Obamacare will boost health spending by “roughly $621 billion” above the amounts Americans would have spent without this misguided law.
What this means for a typical family of four
$621 billion is a pretty eye-glazing number. Most readers will find it easier to think about how this number translates to a typical American family—the very family candidate Obama promised would see $2,500 in annual savings as far as the eye could see. So I have taken the latest year-by-year projections, divided by the projected U.S. population to determine the added amount per person and multiplied the result by 4.
Interactive Guide: What Will Obamacare Cost You?
Simplistic? Maybe, but so too was the President’s campaign promise. And this approach allows us to see just how badly that promise fell short of the mark. Between 2014 and 2022, the increase in national health spending (which the Medicare actuaries specifically attribute to the law) amounts to $7,450 per family of 4.

Let us hope this family hasn’t already spent or borrowed the $22,500 in savings they might have expected over this same period had they taken candidate Obama’s promise at face value. In truth, no well-informed American ever should have believed this absurd promise. At the time, Factcheck.org charitably deemed this claim as “overly optimistic, misleading and, to some extent, contradicted by one of his own advisers.” The Washington Post less charitably awarded it Two Pinocchios (“Significant omissions or exaggerations”). Yet rather than learn from his mistakes, President Obama on July 16, 2012 essentially doubled-down on his promise, assuring small business owners “your premiums will go down.” He made this assertion notwithstanding the fact that in three separate reports between April 2010 and June 2012, the Medicare actuaries had demonstrated that the ACA would increase health spending. To its credit, the Washington Post dutifully awarded the 2012 claim Three Pinocchios (“Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.”)
The past is not prologue: The burden increases ten-fold in 2014
As it turns out, the average family of 4 has only had to face a relatively modest burden from Obamacare over the past four years—a little over $125. Unfortunately, this year’s average burden ($66) will be 10 times as large in 2014 when Obamacare kicks in for earnest. And it will rise for two years after that, after which it hit a steady-state level of just under $800 a year. Of course, all these figures are in nominal dollars. In terms of today’s purchasing power, this annual amount will rise steadily.
But what happened to the spending slowdown?
Some readers may recall that a few months ago, there were widespread reports of a slow-down in health spending. Not surprisingly, the White House has been quick to claim credit for the slowdown in health spending documented in the health spending projections report, arguing that it “is good for families, jobs and the budget.”
On this blog, Avik Roy pointed out that a) since passage of Obamacare, U.S. health spending actually had risen faster than in OECD countries, whereas prior to the law, the opposite was true. Moreover, to the degree that U.S. health spending was slowing down relative to its own recent past, greater cost-sharing was likely to be the principal explanation. Medicare’s actuarial experts confirm that the lion’s share of the slowdown in health spending could be chalked up to slow growth in the economy and greater cost-sharing. As AEI scholar Jim Capretta pithily puts it:
An important takeaway from these new projections is that the CMS Office of the Actuary finds no evidence to link the 2010 health care law to the recent slowdown in health care cost escalation. Indeed, the authors of the projections make it clear that the slowdown is not out of line with the historical link between health spending growth and economic conditions (emphasis added).
In the interests of fair and honest reporting, perhaps it is time the mainstream media begin using “Affordable” Care Act whenever reference is made to this terribly misguided law. Anyone obviously is welcome to quarrel with the Medicare actuary about their numbers. I myself am hard-put to challenge their central conclusion: Obamacare will not save Americans one penny now or in the future. Perhaps the next time voters encounter a politician making such grandiose claims, they will learn to watch their wallet. Until then, let’s spare strapped Americans from having to find $657 in spare change between their couch cushions next year. Let’s delay this law for a year so that policymakers have time to fix the poorly designed Rube Goldberg device known as Obamacare. For a nation with the most complicated and expensive health system on the planet, making it even more complicated and even more expensive never was a good idea.
Footnotes
[1] The Medicare actuary first issued a report carefully estimating the cost impact of Obamacare on April 22, 2010. Its annual national health expenditure projections reports for 2010, 2011 and 2012 all have contained tabulations showing that Obamacare will increase health spending over the next 10 years compared to a counterfactual scenario in which the law was never enacted.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/23/its-official-obamacare-will-increase-health-spending-by-7450-for-a-typical-family-of-four/

Dusting Off the Third Amendment: A Creative Response to Domestic Spying

Dusting Off the Third Amendment: A Creative Response to Domestic Spying

Fourth Amendment arguments against the NSA surveillance programs are plentiful these days. The general perception by the public, and numerous government officials, is that warrantless surveillance and data mining is an unconstitutional search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. However, the existence of secret FISA courts could prove to be an impediment to Fourth Amendment challenges, which is why it’s time to dust off the often neglected and forgotten Third Amendment.
“No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
This straightforward amendment, originally written as a response to the British military forcibly seizing residences for troop quartering, has gained new relevancy. Let’s walk through the argument step by step.
First, we are not currently in a congressionally declared war, therefore we are technically in peacetime, which precludes any national security arguments to the domestic spying program. Second, the National Security Agency is not a purely civilian agency; they operate in partnership with the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other governmental entities, making agency personnel an extension of combatants, and therefore “soldiers.” Thus far, Congress has not authorized wide spread domestic spying of American citizens, leaving no legal ground for the agency to stand on under the Third Amendment. Finally, I believe that the NSA surveillance technology is a proxy for an intelligence agent residing in your home, constantly monitoring your actions without consent. There is no fundamental difference between the NSA’s data mining and eavesdropping operations and a live in agent listening to all your conversations and downloading your browser history. We are all harboring a governmental presence in our homes, without our consent, in what I believe to be a direct violation of the Third Amendment; if our founders were here today I believe they would agree.
I am not the only one to reach this conclusion. Constitutional law professor Glenn Reynolds recently came to a similar conclusion in a column written for USA Today, in which he states,
“It’s our right as American citizens to have privacy in our own homes.”
Privacy and freedom from literal intrusive government is at the heart of the Third Amendment, and at the roots of its foundation. The NSA’s domestic spying program is in violation of the Third Amendment, both directly and in spirit, and should therefore be declared unconstitutional by any court who still holds our fundamental rights sacred.

http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/shanewright22/dusting-off-the-third-amendment-a-creative-respons?awesm=freedo.mw_j04&source=twitter

Friday, September 27, 2013

Let ObamaCare Collapse--Congress can't kill the entitlement state. Only the American people can

Daniel Henninger: Let ObamaCare Collapse


Congress can't kill the entitlement state. Only the American people can.


 
What the GOP's Defund-ObamaCare Caucus is failing to see is that ObamaCare is no longer just ObamaCare. It is about something that is beyond the reach of a congressional vote.
As its Oct. 1 implementation date arrives, ObamaCare is the biggest bet that American liberalism has made in 80 years on its foundational beliefs. This thing called "ObamaCare" carries on its back all the justifications, hopes and dreams of the entitlement state. The chance is at hand to let its political underpinnings collapse, perhaps permanently.
If ObamaCare fails, or seriously falters, the entitlement state will suffer a historic loss of credibility with the American people. It will finally be vulnerable to challenge and fundamental change. But no mere congressional vote can achieve that. Only the American people can kill ObamaCare.
No matter what Sen. Ted Cruz and his allies do, ObamaCare won't die. It would return another day in some other incarnation. The Democrats would argue, rightly, that the ideas inside ObamaCare weren't defeated. What the Democrats would lose is a vote in Congress, nothing more.
A political idea, once it becomes a national program, achieves legitimacy with the public. Over time, that legitimacy deepens. So it has been with the idea of national social insurance.
German Chancellor Otto von Bismark's creation of a social insurance system in the 19th century spread through Europe. After the devastation of World War I, few questioned its need. In the U.S., Franklin Roosevelt's Social Security system was seen as an antidote to the Depression. The public's three-decade support for the idea allowed Lyndon Johnson to pass the Medicare and Medicaid entitlements even in the absence of an economic crisis.
Going back at least to the Breaux-Thomas Medicare Commission in 1999, endless learned bodies have warned that the U.S. entitlement scheme of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is financially unsupportable. Of Medicare, Rep. Bill Thomas said at the time, "One of the biggest problems is that the government tries to administer 10,000 prices in 3,000 counties, and it gets it wrong most of the time." But change never comes.
 
image
Chad Crowe
The Four Horsemen of the Democratic Apocalypse.
Medicaid is the worst medicine in the United States. It grinds on. Doctors in droves are withdrawing from Medicare. No matter. It all lives on.
An established political idea is like a vampire. Facts, opinions, votes, garlic: Nothing can make it die.
But there is one thing that can kill an established political idea. It will die if the public that embraced it abandons it.
Six months ago, that didn't seem likely. Now it does.
The public's dislike of ObamaCare isn't growing with every new poll for reasons of philosophical attachment to notions of liberty and choice. Fear of ObamaCare is growing because a cascade of news suggests that ObamaCare is an impending catastrophe.
Big labor unions and smaller franchise restaurant owners want out. UPS dropped coverage for employed spouses. Corporations such as Walgreens and IBM IBM +0.40%are transferring employees or retirees into private insurance exchanges. Because of ObamaCare, the Cleveland Clinic has announced early retirements for staff and possible layoffs. The federal government this week made public its estimate of premium costs for the federal health-care exchanges. It is a morass, revealing the law's underappreciated operational complexity.
But ObamaCare's Achilles' heel is technology. The software glitches are going to drive people insane.
Creating really large software for institutions is hard. Creating big software that can communicate across unrelated institutions is unimaginably hard. ObamaCare's software has to communicate—accurately—across a mind-boggling array of institutions: HHS, the IRS, Medicare, the state-run exchanges, and a whole galaxy of private insurers' and employers' software systems.
Recalling Rep. Thomas's 1999 remark about Medicare setting prices for 3,000 counties, there is already mispricing of ObamaCare's insurance policies inside the exchanges set up in the states.
The odds of ObamaCare's eventual self-collapse look stronger every day. After that happens, then what? Try truly universal health insurance? Not bloody likely if the aghast U.S. public has any say.
Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger on why the failure of universal healthcare may finally discredit the broader entitlement state. Photos: Associated Press

Enacted with zero Republican votes, ObamaCare is the solely owned creation of the Democrats' belief in their own limitless powers to fashion goodness out of legislated entitlements. Sometimes social experiments go wrong. In the end, the only one who supported Frankenstein was Dr. Frankenstein. The Democrats in 2014 should by all means be asked relentlessly to defend their monster.
Republicans and conservatives, instead of tilting at the defunding windmill, should be working now to present the American people with the policy ideas that will emerge inevitably when ObamaCare's declines. The system of private insurance exchanges being adopted by the likes of Walgreens suggests a parallel alternative to ObamaCare may be happening already.
If Republicans feel they must "do something" now, they could get behind Sen. David Vitter's measure to force Congress to enter the burning ObamaCare castle along with the rest of the American people. Come 2017, they can repeal the ruins.
The discrediting of the entitlement state begins next Tuesday. Let it happen.