Saturday, November 16, 2013

Mark Steyn on Obama on ObamaCare

Mark Steyn:
The most telling line, the one that encapsulates the gulf between the boundless fantasies of the faculty-lounge utopian and the messiness of reality, was this: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Gee, thanks for sharing, genius. Maybe you should have thought of that before you governmentalized one-sixth of the economy.

...As he assured us five years ago, “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.” Well, apart from his signature health-care policy. That’s a mystery to him. “I was not informed directly that the website would not be working,” he told us. The buck stops with something called “the executive branch,” which is apparently nothing to do with him. As evidence that he was entirely out of the loop, he offered this:

"Had I been I informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, “Boy, this is going to be great.” You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, “This is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity,” a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work."

Ooooo-kay. So, if I follow correctly, the smartest president ever is not smart enough to ensure that his website works; he’s not smart enough to inquire of others as to whether his website works; he’s not smart enough to check that his website works before he goes out and tells people what a great website experience they’re in for. But he is smart enough to know that he’s not stupid enough to go around bragging about how well it works if he’d already been informed that it doesn’t work. So he’s smart enough to know that if he’d known what he didn’t know he’d know enough not to let it be known that he knew nothing. The country’s in the very best of hands.
That seems about right.

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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Emperor Stompy Foot: Insurance Companies Will Get Administrative Permission To Sell Illegal Polices

I bet this will go over big with corporate legal departments: Obama proposes just telling the insurance industry to break the law. It will be OK because he says so.
The president is not proposing that the law be changed to allow all health insurance plans grandfathered into Obamacare's eligibility requirements.

No, instead the White House is saying that it will use "enforcement discretion" to allow illegal health insurance plans to be able to still be sold. That is, the Obama administration will not enforce the penalty on individuals for not having eligible health insurance plans and they'll allow the insurance companies to still sell so-called bad plans -- plans they technically can't sell under Obamacare.
I wonder what the various state insurance regulators will say about companies continuing to sell illegal policies. Oh, wait, policies which they just "technically can't sell"

I guess if His Imperial Excellency, the Emperor Stompy Foot the First, decrees it, then the law be damned.

I think that falls under the "Change" part of "Hope & Change".

It still seems to me like subverting the Constitution, which I am pretty sure falls under the technical heading of "Treason". Or maybe that was only before The Change.

I am also pretty sure that saying so is racist, so I'll just call him a "Democrat".

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Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Looting DAKA Store in Venezuela

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Monday, November 11, 2013

The Doolittle Raiders' Final Toast

The last survivors of Jimmy Doolittle's Raiders toast their comrades with the bottle of 1896 Hennessy Cognac presented by Hennessey to Jimmy Doolittle on his 60th birthday:



Here's the 1942 newsreel of the raid:



Here is an interview with Doolittle:

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Sunday, November 10, 2013

1961 Texas Bomb Shelter Opened

Pretty neat bomb shelter, fully stocked in 1961, makes the news.

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Philippine Hurricane Aftermath

It's a mess over there. Here are some pictures.

According to the Daily Mail story linked above:
The Filipino government has threatened the introduction of martial law to battle looting in the wake of the super typhoon Haiyan...

Reports of lawless mobs ransacking the homes of the dead and remains of shops in Tacloban, Leyte...

Efforts by aid agencies to deliver food and water have been hampered by plagues of looters attacking emergency convoys and stealing from supply vans, the Philippine Red Cross have said. A TV station reported ATM machines have also been broken open...

Super-typhoon Haiyan struck with such force that entire villages were flattened, ships were swept inland on a sea of debris and corpses were left hanging from coconut trees after the waves receded.

Even as families began to grieve for their dead, they faced a grim battle to find shelter and forage for food and clean water amid the devastation.

Dazed survivors walked the streets ‘like zombies looking for food’ while looters rampaged through shops and mobs attacked aid trucks loaded with food, tents and water.

‘All systems, all vestiges of modern living - communications, power, water, all are down. Radios are down so there is no way to communicate with the people in a mass sort of way.’
Two of the things I take away from it are the desperate need for potable water, and the need for boots for walking and scrambling through the wreckage.

Medical supplies, gloves, chainsaws, food, security from looters.

Endless. It's hard to believe how awful it is for them today.

Is this what Oahu will be like when we get hit by a Category Four or Five hurricane? The single-wall houses which cover the ridges will be just as destroyed as those in the Philippines, as will the water distribution network.

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Here's a Hoot for the Plugged In Prepper

A wood stove which fans itself and charges your electronics thru your USB.

Victorinox, tremble in yer army boots.

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