If you don’t buy health insurance you will be fined (not taxed).  Period.  That is, unless you won’t be.

Since the implementation of ObamaCare (remember, not a single Republican voted in favor–this is a wholly Democrat sponsored bill) there have been 13 separation exemptions approved and added for sectors of society (individuals) to not have to buy health insurance.  These include people who are homeless, people who have filed for bankruptcy, people who have experienced a fire or other financial emergency.

This broad swath of exemptions already includes millions of people.  They don’t have to buy insurance.  But they also will not be denied health care.  They show up to the emergency room and are treated.  The E.R. doctor or triage nurse takes the place of their Primary Care Physician.  So who pays for it?  You and I do.

These exemptions were extended conveniently to be in effect until when?  After the mid-term elections in 2016, of course.

Now, there is a new exemption that actually was added quietly back in December.  This exemption includes those people who have or will lose their insurance because it was one of the “old, outdated” policies that did not meet the minimum standards for inclusion into the health care law.

How does one apply for the new exemption?  Simply state that you lost your insurance and can’t find an affordable one in the exchanges.  The change to the law (illegal, as it is) does not define what “hardship” means either.  If someone is claiming the exemption be reason of a hardship, they are encouraged (not required) to submit documentation, “if possible”.  The exemption even applies to people who live in one of the states that opted to not extend Medicare eligibility.  That sounds like discrimination to me.  Why should someone be fined for not buying insurance just because their state is more financially solvent than another?

HHS Secretary Sebelius defends the law saying that, “It’s been really aimed at people who could not afford coverage one way or another.”  Wait a minute.  I thought we were supposed to cancel our cable and cell phone bills in order to afford ObamaCare.

Once the individual mandate is loosened to the point of no longer being a mandate, does not this law lose its main purpose?  There will not be enough people buying insurance to keep premiums down for everyone else.  The whole house of cards is about to come down.  I, for one, look forward to a reshuffling of this particular deck.

So, in mid-February of this same year, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein goes on record defending the NSA and their intelligence gathering methods.  These included scooping up data on private phone calls made from citizens without their knowledge, consent, or a warrant.  Feinstein said it was important for the public safety that the government agency be able to continue this practice.

A month later, Feinstein is complaining that the CIA is breaking the law by possibly, POSSIBLY spying on a computer network designed for Congress and their staffers.  She is using the network to dig up dirt on President Bush (still?) and the enhanced interrogation techniques used in what was formerly known as the War on Terror.  (We’ve rebranded it as Man-Made Contingency Operations.)  She claims the CIA is spying on their work and thwarting it where they can.  She is against this type of digital surveillance.

It is fine when the government spies on you.  She’s not so big a fan when it might, MIGHT be happening to her.

This is the same Senator from California who is against private citizens owning those scary black rifles known in the media as “assault rifles”.  Yet her own team of armed body guards practice continually not against a known or perceived terror threat, but against an angry citizen threat.

She is just a classic example of the political elite class who dream up, draft and enact laws the limit your abilities and liberties while exempting themselves from their strictures.

2013 budget $525.4 billion.  (Preparing the report for the budget request and printing it cost $34,000).

Overseas Contingency Operations (those pesky wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) is another $88.5 billion and is not part of the “real” defense budget.  (This was always part of the problem.  We never raised taxes to pay for the wars or asked the citizenry to sacrifice in any way to finance them.  We just borrowed more money.)

2012 budget $530.6 billion, with OCO budget of an additional $115.1 billion.

2011 budget $528.2 billion plus OCO budget of $158.8 billion.

The DoD has learned from prior draw downs that it is impossible to generate the savings they seek by just becoming efficient.  They have to get rid of programs.  Personnel costs account for 1/3 of the budget.

In 2014, this ratio jumped to one-half.  Somehow–unexplained.

Here is where the numbers and math start to go fuzzy.  (Fancy talk for “They are lying to you.”)

See, the real budget for 2012 was $530.6 billion.  The proposed budget was $570.7 billion.  $40.1 billion higher.  The proposed budget for 2013 was $525.4 billion.  They tell you they cut the budget by $45.3 billion.  Quite a savings, yes?  But they only cut $5.2 billion in real dollars.  You can not count the $40 billion that you didn’t get (and thus did not spend) as savings.

Once the “contingency operations” end are we going to claim another $85 billion in savings?  I mean, we simply borrowed that money from China.  If you stop borrowing money, it the reduction in expenditures really a savings?

One of the ten missions we were supposed to focus on with the reshaping of our drawn down forces was to “deter and defeat aggression”.  Another was to “provide a stabilizing presence”.  Sure.  Ask the Ukraine how we are doing on those two fronts.  Compare these to the four missions in the 2014 budget proposal.

1. Act as good stewards of the public funds.

2. Implement and deepen program alignment to the new defense strategy.

3. Create a force that is ready across a spectrum of missions.

4. Keep people central to our plans.

Not a word about being able to defeat enemies, defend the homeland, protect allies, maintain global military supremacy.  These sound like the feel good goals and a mission statement for a marketing firm.

Now here is the kicker.  The defense budget request is for $526.6 billion, and increase of only $1.2 billion.  However, secretary Hagel is seeking to cut 70,000 troops.  That is a minimum of 2 Army Divisions.  We only have ten active divisions.  He is also seeking to eliminate the A-10 aircraft, the best close air support platform ever flown.  The U2 spy plane is a victim to the budget as well, even though it has been around for fifty some years and is still quite a capable SIGINT and photographic intelligence collection platform.  It times time and fuel to redirect a satellite.  A plane sortie can be planned in hours.  The Navy is not immune.  They are looking at losing an aircraft carrier with its air wing, a nuclear sub, three destroyers, three support ships.  The Air Force will have to retire its entire fleet of KC10 tankers as well as some of the Global Hawk drones (a cheaper plane that could also do the U2 mission.)

With a force this much smaller, with this many fewer ships, planes, and people, why is the budget proposal larger–even nominally?  Should it not be radically smaller?  Where is the stewardship for the public funds?

Obamacare–the most illegally changed law in history.  The premise of the law was to provide lower cost health care to all, even free to some.  The 26-million citizens touted to not have any health insurance for whatever reason were supposed to be able to get affordable health care because of the law.

Negotiations on what the bill would include (and cost) were held in private sessions, not open to public viewing or scrutiny.  In the end, not a single Republican voted for the law.  Not one.  But having the majority in both houses of Congress, they were able to pass the law “so that we could see what was in it.”

It seems there was a lot that Congress and the president didn’t like.  As of November 2013, there have been 27 changes to the law.

They exempted themselves and their staff from being subject to the law.  I guess it is not as good as they make it out to be if they want no part of it.  Instead, they get to keep their “Cadillac plans”–that you and I subsidize, of course.  They changed the mandatory enrollment date–the first one.  The system was not ready to accept enrollees, plus there just wasn’t anybody in a hurry to sign up.

There was language in the law that stated specific changes could NOT be made.  Like the employer mandate.  This was a hard, iron-clad rule.  Until it was changed–in direct contravention to the law.  There was a rule about having to prove one’s income since the applicant got higher subsidies the lower their income was.  They took this out so that the government took the applicant at his word what his income was.  Think anybody gamed the system?

I thought this was supposed to be the perfect health care system, providing for all?  Instead, it was just a power play–a grab by the government to take over a sixth of our economy so they could tax it to have a cash cow to pay for every other social program they can dream up.

Statistics from the other day revealed that of the millions who did not have insurance before the law, 90% of them still do not.  They have not bothered to sign up.  Many of the uninsured are also not technically savvy and do not even know what all they law could do for them.  Of the 10% who have signed up, half of them have not paid their premiums.  So, we gone through all of this shit for 5% of the target audience.  A 2-3 trillion dollar expense that the middle class will pay for– for what, a million people?

And now, now that the mid-term elections are on the horizon, Obama has decided to change the law–illegally–again by delaying the individual sign up mandate until after the 2014 elections as well as allowing people to keep insurance plans that do not meet the minimum requirements until when?  You got it.  Until after the election.

This is not how laws work.  the president does not have the legal authority to do what he is doing by the stroke of a pen.  Why he is not being challenged is just another example of how weak willed our elected leaders are.

http://www.galen.org/topics/at-least-27-significant-changes-already-have-been-made-to-obamacare/

 

I’ve mentioned before how the education system has been overrun by liberal thought and ideology.  Consider Condi Rice.  On February 4, 2014, Rutgers announced their selection as her for speaker in their commencement ceremony in May.  The faculty is protesting and wants her removed from consideration. Why?

 

I mean, she is a black, female academia member. Should be a shoe-in.

 

Look at her qualifications:

 

Author of three books.

 

Doctorate scholar.

 

Concert level pianist.

 

National Security Adviser.  (First female ever to hold that position.)

 

Secretary of State of the United States.  (Second female to hold that, second African American).

 

What could set the faculty of Rutgers against her?  Her politics. She’s Republican.  She was in the BUSH cabinet.  (Grounds for crucifixion, practically a war criminal).  She is not pro-choice (pro-death, but that is a different blog), she favored the war in Iraq and even “enhanced interrogation” techniques.  This is just another shining example of how the left views EVERYTHING through this lens of politics.

 

Consider previous speakers.  2013 Virginia Long, 2012 Greg Brown.  Nothing too controversial.  A female judge and a CEO of Motorola.  (Though the evil corporate giant aspect is puzzling in that it was not an area of contention.)

 

2011 speaker–Toni Morrison:  First “paid speaker”.  She is also black… also an author.  Ah, but she was a liberal.  She opined after the Clinton Whitewater investigation that he was being mistreated because of his (Bill Clinton’s) “blackness”.

 

“Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.”

 

That same year,, Rutgers paid Snooki $32,000 ($2000 more than Ms. Morrison) to give two speeches.  What has Snooki done aside from being a stupid whore on an MTV show?

 

In 2010, the speaker was Eleanor Smeal.  This one is no real surprise, as she was a member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), serving as their president from 1977 to 1982 and again from 1985 to 1987.

 

The 2008 speaker?  Gwen Ifill, probably most famous for her “moderation” of the 2008 Vice Presidential debate between (career politician) “statesman” Joe Biden and that “obvious airhead” Sarah Palin.  Her book about life and race in the age of Obama really took off after Obama was elected.

 

So, liberal women of either race are welcomed.  A conservative woman of at least equal qualifications outside of their careers, and incredibly more competent within their chosen career are shunned.

 

I quit my own PhD program after I was “counseled” on in what philosophy I would approach my topic from.  The concept of writing my own thesis and conducting research with an open mind was not allowed.  I was told I had to do it “this way” (the way my committee wanted it.)

 

No, the liberals own academia.  Plain and simple.  And they use it as early and as often as possible to shape what children learn and how they learn it.

 

So I don’t have to blog it anymore on Face Book…

1.  Smaller government.  Period.
2. Term limits for politicians.  No more careers in Washington.
3. An unfettered Second Amendment.
4. Controlled, legal immigration.
5. Having the strongest military in the world.

 

1.  Over government just submitted a budget for fiscal year 2015 for almost four trillion dollars.  The president proudly proclaims that it is focused on creating jobs and narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor.  (I know… two core responsibilities of the government.)

The budget accepts plainly that it projects a $564 billion deficit…if he gets the $651 billion tax increase he wants on the rich and if the economy recovers like his pixie dust says it will.  If he doesn’t get that, but the budget is still passed, we’re looking at another $1.15 trillion dollar deficit for that year only.  The interest on the debt alone–JUST THE INTEREST will be more than the defense budget ($496 billion) by 2020.

Oh, and that defense budget?  It is roughly the same as last year but will fund 70,000 fewer Soldiers, fewer aircraft, lower housing allowances, but with higher health care co-pays.  We’re carving out two (minimum) of our 10 active divisions and still have the same budget?  Where are the savings?

Two thirds of this 3.9 trillion is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.  $2.6 trillion for just ONE YEAR for those three programs.  Seriously? Our government has outgrown its usefulness and is now an obstacle.

2.  Politicians:  It has never been truer that you can tell when a politician is lying because his lips are moving.  They ALL do.  They say what they think you want to hear and then, once elected, do whatever their own warped ideology steers them to.  None of them have the inclination to go for a term or two, make a small difference, make things a little better, and then go back to whatever small or family business they were doing before.  Jefferson (I think) said we should be electing the unwilling among us.

Congress was supposed to be a service, not a career.  There are people in Congress who have been there since I left high school and that is a long fucking time.

Think I’m making this up?  The longest serving Congressman today, John Dingell has been serving continuously for over 58 years.  That is longer than I have been alive.  Looking at the list of longest serving, the top ten are all Democrats.  17 of the top 20 are Democrats.  Charlie Rangel, that crook from New York:  over 43 years.  71 of the top 100 longest serving are Democrats.  That’s over 70%.  These same clowns have been making our public policy since Gerald Ford was President. 15 of those 100 are STILL occupying office (since they stopped serving you long ago).  How in touch can these people possible be with Main Street America?  Right there is a well documented argument for term limits.

3.  A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.  Seems pretty simple but I’m not a constitutional law student.  My interpretation says the federal government shall not have the ability to limit, control, or otherwise harness the right of the people to possess and brandish weapons.  The amendment was put in place to provide for the security of the state against an over-reaching federal government.  It does not specify and therefore cannot be implied that this means people who have guns have to be in “the militia”.  It does not state that the weapons have to hold fewer than 10 rounds.  It does not specify that it cannot possess a bayonet lug or have a folding stock.  The Second Amendment is my justification by itself to be able to carry a concealed weapon.

4.  Roy Beck did an amazing series of videos on immigration–legal immigration–and its impact on the American society, culture and resources.  Here are the links.  Spend 15 minutes watching them.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfxRuY4EJ0A  and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t976q6CeN8Q.  Here is an updated version.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJGkbe2tisc

I’ll talk more on illegal immigration in another blog but these videos are a good foundation for realizing how our policy does not work and can never work.  It will only hurt those we allow in and those who were born here.

5.  The US military has saved countless millions from tyranny.  In years past the threat of US military use has caused bad actors to change their course of action.  The possibility of the US to use force was enough to stop mad men from carrying out their evil plans.  I think our winning World War II by the method we used altered that.  And I’m not saying we should not have bombed Japan.  We did the right thing.  But the horror from what we unleashed altered our psyche at the national leader level.  We scared ourselves.  I don’t think we would ever use them again (atomic weapons).  But we had to have them and prove regularly that they worked on occasion to keep others in check.

Having the best military does not necessarily mean having the largest military.  Look at North Korea.  A million strong (active) and probably twice that (reserves) but they are still using artillery pieces from the 1950s.  But we are a few more defense budget cuts away from giving away our military edge.  A weak US military emboldens evil doers the world over.

I’ll do more on the military in another paper in the future.  (Promise)  I’m as tired and war weary as the next American.  We spent our blood and treasure on a fool’s errand, and I was a part of it.  I’m not agreeing with those idiots that cried “blood for oil” or “Bush lied, people died.”  If it was blood for oil, why are we not swimming in Iraqi oil?  Why did I have to pay $3.48 per gallon of gas today?  But I do disagree with our current use of military power.

Our Soldiers (all branches) are not statesmen.  We are not nation builders.  Our primary function is to find, fix, and close with the enemy to kill them.  We should invade, kill, destroy, then leave.  No rebuilding, no peace keeping, no occupation.  Our use of military power should be restrained until there truly is no other option, then unleashed without regard to world opinion about ruthlessness or brutality.  When used, our military response should so shock the world as to cause recoil and awe.

In only this manner, will we begin to see fewer episodes of adventurism.  If the bad guys truly believe that we can respond and will respond and that the end game includes their own personal death, they will start to think twice.  Until we achieve that mindset in others, we will continue to lose our national treasure in wars of folly.

It is pretty simple, really.  I need a place to put down my thoughts without burdening those in my sphere of contact.  Not everyone sees the world as I do, that is, through the lens of truth and reality.  Not everyone wants to read my rants and tirades on Face Book even though they are on my timeline.   Most of my Contacts didn’t anyway or if they did, they never commented.  So, I echo their thoughts precisely, they are too intimidated to counter, or they were not even reading them.  Option 3 makes the most sense.

I didn’t always wear these lenses, these particular glasses.  But ever since the Carter years it became apparent to me that the “other side” the left, saw everything politically.  It seemed that everything was political– from God in schools and public scenery, to the relationship between individual and doctor, to how children were fed, nurtured, and raised.  The left figured out early on that to own the schools was to be able to shape the formative years of our offspring.  But they have to be embedded throughout—from late grade school on.  Anything less and their grip will weaken.  A quiet victory without a shot being fired.

But I’m getting too far into the left and schools and away from the purpose of this blog page.  I’ll come back to that another day.  I promise.  Where was I?  Oh, Face Book…

So rather than pollute my timeline with missives that only myself and 3 or 4 others read (or even like), I move them to here.  I had pretty tight controls on my FB stuff as to who sees it, but FB is in it to make money.  I don’t necessarily trust them to maintain my controls.  After all, they can see what you type even if you do not post it.  (Yes, they can.)  They mine your data in order to “suggest” other FB pages.  They tailor those little ads along the right side of your screen to mesh with what you do and look at while logged in, even if you are not actively online (Face Book).

My FB page, if I decide to even keep it open will now be polluted with recipes, pictures of fluffy puppies, and scowling kittens.  I’ll put down what I think here—in a more closed network, but one where I’ll exercise even greater freedom of expression.  People may have friended me on FB because they were friends with my spouse or other close friend.  This tended to soften what I said to avoid over offending others.

You’re here because you were specifically invited and you were curious enough to see what the hub bub was about.  (As time goes on, others may visit based on word of mouth.)  You chose to enter the URL and scroll down paragraph by paragraph.  I am not tethered by the same restrictions and considerations here.   Some may see me as out of control and unvarnished.  Tough.  My blog page is just that.  Mine.  It is not a democracy though I will talk about that fading philosophy eventually.  Rather, it is a monarchy.  What I say goes.

So, sit back and click through the pages of my thoughts.  Or not.  Once published though, they are out there as part of the public body of knowledge—whether or not you want them to be or agree with them.  That’s the nature of this beast.