| Obamacare navigators will have access to highly personal data from potential “customers” to assess their “needs.” That means income levels, birth dates, addresses, eligibility for government assistance, Social Security numbers, and sensitive medical information. They’ll be targeting both individuals and small businesses. Anyone they can lay their grubby hands on. Who’s getting the navigator grants and training? “Community groups” in 33 states that naturally include socialized-medicine-supporting unions and Saul Alinsky–steeped activist outfits.On Capitol Hill last week, a top Obamacare official told GOP lawmakers that navigators will not be required to undergo background checks. Criminal records are not automatically disqualifying — and that includes identity theft. The federal rule-makers will require online training of a measly 20 hours. Health-care-regulations watchdog Betsy McCaughey adds that navigators “don’t have to know math or insurance, but rules announced April 5 specify you have to match the race, ethnicity, and language preferences of the neighborhood that will be targeted.”
The Obamacare navigator corps smacks of ACORN redux, stocked with demographically tailored Democratic-party recruitment operatives, not objective, informed insurance experts. |
“Obamacare ‘Navigators,’ Michael Malkin, The National Review. In a breathtakingly paranoid piece, Malkin manages to link the ACA with Saul Alinsky, ACORN, the “brass knuckled” SEIU, terrorists, and Kathleen Sibelius’s “abortion-racketeering friends” at Planned Parenthood. |
| Is Britain to be run in the shadows by some diehard Western traditionalists pulling the levers of free-market capitalism, democracy, and freedom of the individual, so that in its plazas and squares others have the freedom and wherewithal to damn just those values? In Britain, as in the West in general, deportation is a fossilized concept. Unity is passé. Patriotism is long suspect. The hip metrosexual cultures of the urban West strain to find fault in their inheritance, and seem to appreciate those who do that in the most cool fashion — but always with the expectation that there will be some poor blokes who, in terms of clean water, medical care, free speech, and dependable electricity, ensure that London is not Lagos, that Stockholm is not Damascus, and that Los Angeles is not Nuevo Laredo. | “Western Cultural Suicide,” Victor David Hanson, The National Review”. The chief existential threat to America now seem to be “the hip meteosexual cultures of the West”. “Metrosexual” . Really? I thought that hoary pejorative had been consigned to the linguistic dustbin in the mid-1990s. |
| the potential scandal of HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius raising private money to pitch Obamacare is “the Obama administration’s own Iran/Contra.” | Charles Krauthammer, on Fox News. Yes, sure it’s a good analogy, except that disseminating information about health care is not exactly the same as, 1) selling arms to terrorists; and, 2) trading arms for hostages and lying about it to Congress. |
| Kootenai County, Idaho Sheriff Ben Wolfinger threatened on Friday to drop his department’s sponsorship of a Boy Scout troop because “[i]t would be inappropriate for the sheriff’s office to sponsor an organization that is promoting a lifestyle that is in violation of state law.” Just in case there was any ambiguity regarding what “lifestyle” Wolfinger was referring to, he also sent a copy of an anti-sodomy statute that is still on the books in Idaho to an official for the Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts of America’s National Council voted last week to stop discriminating against gay scouts, although they will continue to exclude LGBT people from scout leadership. |
“Idaho Sheriff Threatens To Stop Sponsoring Boy Scout Troop Because ‘Sodomy’ Is Illegal”, Think Progress.
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| Pompeo, who visited Guantanamo Bay last week, said that was not the case as he becomes visibly agitated after being confronted with facts.“It is not a crisis mode,” he said Sunday. “We have prisoners down there that have chosen not to consume calories, have chosen not to take protein. We now have an obligation to try to take care of them. The last thing to say about these folks who are assertedly hunger strikers is that they look to me like a lot of them have put on weight.”
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GOP Rep: Gitmo Hunger Strikers Look Like They’ve Put On Weight, in quoting Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas), on MSNBC. |
| Should we fail to do so, there will be a reaction against the resulting violence long before the Mississippi, The Thames or any other river flows with blood. Should our nation be foolish enough to pass immigration legislation along the lines of the current “Gang of 8” monstrosity, diversity will be our fascism; not our strength. Either the state or an outraged mob of the people will react against the violence in the streets and our freedoms as Americans could well be taken away from us. | “Comprehensive Amnesty Reform Could Lead to Fascism,” Red State |
| And there it is: Dopey stimulus, obtuse bailout, noodle-headed Obamacare, half-wit Dodd-Frank, damfool IRS Tea Party crashers, AP and Fox News beset by oafish peeping Toms and the Benghazi tale told by an idiot. One could go on. Stupid is a great force in human affairs. And the great force has a commander in chief. | “Stupid,” P.J. O’Rourke, The Evening Standard. |
| The key question now is whether we are willing to accept a Khamenei Doctrine, whereby no state that is part of the Iran/Hezbollah security system is permitted to leave it. Of course, the Brezhnev Doctrine was that of a global superpower armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons; the Khamenei Doctrine is that of a third world state, Iran, of only 75 million people and so far without a nuclear arsenal. And this is what makes the American position to date so incomprehensible, and so dangerous. Nasrallah and Khamenei are taking a gamble based on their assessment of us–that we will do nothing even in the face of their sending expeditionary forces to Syria. So far they have been proved right. Will we really accept this action on their part, with its consequences throughout the Middle East?Put another way, Nasrallah and Khamenei have decided to win. They understand the costs of losing, and the benefits of winning, and have made their decision. The United States has made no such decision and appears content to lose.
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“The Brezhnev Doctrine, Iran Style,” Elliot Abrams, The Weekly Standard. The Domino Theory revived From 1967. |
Politiscripts, by Richard Roth
Political discourse consists of scripted, symbolic speech acts. The ends justify the memes and the memes justify the ends. Words become actions and actions become words.
Politiscripts, by Richard Roth 