I don’t mind the president taking a victory lap [about killing Osama Bin Laden] but this was, well, unpresidential. With the Dems’ recent history of being defense pushovers, the folks in the White House are acting like a geek everyone thought would never lose his virginity but unexpectedly did. And, with the hottest chick in school. “That’s right, I nailed Osama.” “Here’s the room where it happened.” “That was the chair I was sitting in.

Last night I heard Charles Krauthammer trying in vain to defend American secularism by pointing to the Constitution’s prohibition of a “religious test” in order to hold public office. Two points should be made about this. First, even on his understanding of “religious test,” there is nothing unconstitutional about a citizen refusing to vote for someone because of his religion. Krauthammer’s understanding of the Constitution here would be relevant if someone were proposing to remove Romney and Huntsman from the ballot because of their Mormonism. But if someone proposes to not vote for them because of their Mormonism, the Constitution says to such an enlightened voter, “Be my guest.” Second, when the Constitution was adopted, “religious test” mean “denominational test,” and included all Protestant denominations. I mention this merely as a point of historical interest for all of you antiquarians. And third, the refusal to apply a religious test only works if everybody agrees beforehand to submit to the badly camouflaged religion of secularism. In other words, the refusal to apply religious tests only works if everybody has already passed the established religious test. But if somebody doesn’t pass that religious test, and has the bad manners to run for Congress anyway, say, as a full-throated jihadist, we will all be treated to the spectacle of secularists applying a religious test while pretending with smug superiority that they are doing no such thing. Their facial expressions while conducting this interesting intellectual exercise create quite an aesthetic treat.

I’m tired of people saying [Palin] isn’t qualified. You can’t use that argument anymore after you elect a Community Organizer as President.

evilteabagger

Sure I can, and I will. Just because the American electorate chose a novice once doesn’t mean they should do so again. Palin is in many ways the conservative Obama: they both have dynamic personalities (or, at least, candidate Obama did), they excel at ginning up their respective bases, and they have little experience in governing—although she has more than he. They both espouse principles at the broad level (although Obama stretches the very meaning of the word to include, well, just about anything the listener impresses on them).

If Palin wants Obama to lose in 2012, the best thing she could do is provide sideline support—for a real candidate—with her winning personality that conservatives love and leaves liberals with their heads between their knees blowing into paper bags. It doesn’t matter if I sympathize with Palin’s politics more than I do Obama’s. Neither of them are qualified to be president.

(Source: antigovernmentextremist)

Well, at first [Sarah Palin] strikes you as folksy, [a]nd then you realize: She might be running for president of the United States! And then, don’t we have the obligation to tell her what a terrible idea that is?

Gary Johnson

Ron Paul on Gary Johnson: “I can’t imagine endorsing anybody else” - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

(via hilker)

Please, Sarah—don’t run.

The Obama administration, aiming to encourage health insurance companies to offer child-only policies, said Wednesday that they could charge higher premiums for coverage of children with serious medical problems, if state law allowed it. Earlier this year, major insurers, faced with an unprofitable business, stopped issuing new child-only policies… . The difficulty in preserving access to child-only insurance policies is the latest example of unintended consequences of the new law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

U.S. to Let Insurers Raise Fees for Policies on Sick Children - NYTimes.com

Critics of the Obama health care plan pointed out that it would result in employers dropping plans, in insurers dropping coverage, and in costs to consumers going up.  The Obama administration denied that any of these things would happen.  Yet all of these things are happening.  

Employers started to get rid of coverage.  Insurers started to get rid of products.  So what did the Obama administration do?  It backed down from its law, exempting powerful employers, and now releasing insurers from cost control measures.  Why?—because Obama can’t afford to alienate vast swaths of the electorate right now.  His law does bad things to people … and he’s going to put those bad things off as long as he can.  Maybe until after he’s out of office.

Next year, seniors will have to pay more under their Medicare Advantage plans. You can bet that Obama will swoop in with some exemption or amendment that will save these seniors from these costs.  

Why is the President in this predicament?  Here’s why:  President Obama could have been honest about his healthcare plan; if he had been, voters wouldn’t later be shocked by the obviously forecastable, “unintended”[1] consequences of the his law.  But instead of being honest, he sold his law with serial lies; serial, demonstrable lies.  And this was stupid, because everyone knew that his lies would be exposed, one by one, as parts of the law went into effect.  That’s why the administration is scrambling to minimize the outcomes Obama derided as fantasy and fabrication.

—-

1.  Shame on the New York Times for calling this an unintended consequence.  If I punch you in the eye, I may not have intended to give you a black eye, but I’d hardly call that an “unintended” result of my punch.

(via jeffmiller)

at least they didn’t call these effects “unforeseen.”

(via hilker)

The only thing transparent about Obamacare is how awful and damaging it is (will be). Tuesday’s election is a concrete illustration of how voters are reacting to that fact.