Interesting Items 07/31

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –

In this issue:

  1. Lisa
  2. Awan
  3. BSA
  4. Mueller
  5. Charlie
  6. Medicaid
  7. O’BamaCare
  8. Transgender

  1. Lisa. Our senior Alaska US Senator, Lisa Murkowski continued her individual against repeal of O’BamaCare with votes against every single repeal attempt in the US Senate.  As the week wore on, her arguments got increasingly incoherent.  The last series was that she didn’t like the process, as the repeal legislation did not make it through the appropriate committee, though Regular Order has been suspended for at least a decade in the Senate and Lisa has voted for things as it suited her.  Lisa wants health care reform and O’BamaCare repeal to make it thru the senate committee she sits on, yet given the chance, she has not offered legislation to repeal, repair or modify O’BamaCare.  Some of the locals believe that she is shilling for her buds in Planned Parenthood.  Others believe this is little more than her personal animus against President Trump.  Either way, she just painted herself into a corner that she is going to have to figure out how to get herself out of.  While she is as stubborn as her father, she generally has (or had) marginally better political instincts.  Not anymore.  The woman who voted time after time to repeal O’BamaCare voted against every single repeal attempt this year when it really counted.  The political left up here is apoplectic in it joy.  Snoopy dances by all the usual suspects have been continuous.  Lisa’s problem is that the political world has its own laws of physics.  The political world is a non-linear system, and the reaction to an action, perturbation of the system is neither opposite nor similarly sized (equal).  And Lisa gave local politics here in Alaska, particularly those of us who have supported her in a few elections, a good swift kick expecting a predictable result.  Sucks to be her.  Following the end of the senate festivities, Lisa got a personal call from Interior Secretary ZInke, though the transcript was not released, Zinke did allow that a number of initiatives in Interior aimed at rolling back its decade long war on Alaska may no longer be at the top of his list to get done.  Lisa promptly cancelled a committee meeting that would consider Interior nominations by President Trump.  The usual suspects on the left up here were shocked and outraged, though they never expressed similar shock and outrage for any of the high-handed actions O’Bama’s Interior Secretary took against Alaska for eight solid years.  This is not over.  It is only going to get uglier before it is all over.  Lisa has just cut off her friends and supporters at the knees.  Hope she likes her new friends.  http://mustreadalaska.com/murkowski-crisis-own-making/

 

  1. Awan. One of the things you must give the democrats is that they leave no stone unturned in their pursuit of criminal conspiracies.  Unfortunately, more times than not, those conspiracies seem to take place on their side of the political fence.  Latest example is former DNC Chair and current House member Debbie Wasserman – Schultz (DWS), whose Pakistani IT guys appear to have run a spy ring from inside her office in the House for several years.  The head guy is one Imran Awan.  He and two brothers are under investigation by Capitol Police.  So far, there have been seized hard drives that they brothers attempted to destroy, a laptop owned by Awan found in a House office building that Awan didn’t work in.  That seizure triggered a DWS threat to Capitol Police to return her employee’s property.  The FBI is now involved analyzing the destroyed hard drives.  Last week, Awan was arrested at Dulles attempting to flee the country.  It appears that the brothers were agents of the Pakistani government, hacking House members, breaching sensitive congressional information, and transferring that information overseas to their masters in Pakistan.  These guys have been involved in several civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud.  And through it all, DWS has steadfastly defended the brothers and their actions.  Is she really this stupid?  Likely, though I would lean more toward venal as a better description.  http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/25/report-fbi-investigating-smashed-hard-drives-retrieved-from-from-wasserman-schultzs-pakistani-born-it-workers-home/

 

  1. BSA. The President of the United States is the honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America, and is as such invited he has an open invitation to speak before the organization.  This was started at the beginning of Scouting with Teddy Roosevelt a century ago.  During his time in office, O’Bama viewed the BSA as opposition rather than supporters and never took advantage of the open invitation though he did mealy-mouth appropriate niceties.  Democrat delegates to the 2000 democrat national convention booed Boy Scouts who took to the stage with the American flag.  The excuse was that the BSA was not sufficiently gay friendly, something decades of lawfare solved by pressuring the Scouts into accepting homosexual leaders and members in 2013.  This year, President Trump went to the National Jamboree in WV and spoke to a huge and very supportive crowd.  As usual, he went off script and got political, which the scouts loved.  OTOH, the usual media and democrat finger wavers were not happy, accusing Trump of politicizing scouting.  They trotted out a bunch of leftist Eagle Scouts and former scout leaders to help make their case for them.  Newsweek went so far as to refer to the rally as remindful of a Hitler Youth rally.  That’ll get the rust belt Trump voters back on the democrat train, I’m sure.  Due to the media response, Trump went back the day after and made another speech which was received the same way by all players.  http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/07/liberals-compare-boy-scouts-to-hitler-youth-still-cant-understand-why-they-lose-elections/

 

  1. Mueller. We saw significant pushback against Robert Mueller’s open-ended investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign last week from Trump supporters, right wing media, and the Trump WH itself, much to the consternation of the usual suspects in the media.  Muller has expanded his investigation into Trump business dealings as far back as 2007 – 2008, which they will get their smarmy little palms on his tax returns and undoubtedly leak them to waiting media for publication.  As it turns out, the order appointing Mueller limits him to investigate confirmed by then-FBI Director Comey before the House Intelligence Committee on March 20, 2017.  This does not authorize a wide-ranging investigation into all things Trump.  There are those out there that make a solid case that the appointing letter is illegal, as it violates existing (In)Justice Department guidelines for investigations.  Trump loyalists are also investigating the investigators, noting that seven lawyers Mueller hired contributed nearly $61,000 to democrat candidates including Hillary Clinton.  If Mueller does not constrain his investigation, Mr. Rosenstein has the duty to fire him.  Kurt Schlichter put together a roadmap for the firing, including an open letter to Mueller, Rosenstein and Sessions, laying out a series of deliverables for Mueller and giving a hard date for him to provide them.  The letter reminds the public that the FBI Director himself said on three different occasions there was not collusion between the campaign and Russia.  The letter will point out that Muller and Comey are close personal friends and demand Mueller explain how this friendship will not get in the way of and open and unbiased investigation.  The letter should ask about Hillary donors and supporters conducting a partisan investigation into his presidency.  Then go on to ask about the endless series of leaks from the investigation team and ask what Mueller is doing to stop them and remove the leakers.  The letter closes by giving Mueller a completion date to present his findings to the Attorney General.  Such a letter would be a great way to start closing up this particular shop.  https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/07/24/trump-needs-to-be-smart-about-how-he-fires-mueller-n2358768

 

  1. Charlie. 11-month-old Charlie Gard passed away at a National Health Service (NHS) hospital last week.  The British court did not allow his parents to remove him from the hospital and pass away at home.  His parents did fly in a US specialist who was allowed to examine the youngster a week or two ago.  His conclusion was that too much time had passed and Charlie was past the point where muscle and organ deterioration could be reversed by treatment.  Essentially, the NHS hospital, a world-class hospital by all descriptions, slow-rolled treatment and dragged out the festivities in court since February to the point that treatment was no longer possible.  This is what Death Panels do.  It is the future that Susan Collins, John McCain and Lisa Murkowski have for every single one of us starting with the elderly and disabled.  A government large enough to give you everything is big enough to take it all away whenever they please.  https://accordingtohoyt.com/2017/07/25/the-free-market-versus-death-panels-by-alpheus-madsen/

 

  1. Medicaid. One of the excuses for failing to repeal O’BamaCare or even rolling back the three mandates was protection and defense of Medicaid, which was the carrot used by the regime to sign up people for O’BamaCare.  It was also the vehicle used to artificially bulk up the number of enrollees.  The government cheese (crack cocaine) used to entice states was a promise to reimburse Medicaid expenses for new enrollees at 100% for the first few years rather than the normal 50% reimbursement for the rest of the system.  That reimbursement rate was to be ratcheted back over a few years to the normal 50%.  Initially, hospitals and participating doctors catered to the new enrollees at the expense of the existing population.  More importantly, it blew a hole in state and federal Medicaid budgets while getting the state governors who foolishly signed up for Medicaid expansion on board defending and protecting O’BamaCare.  The numbers for this are staggering and speak to the utter folly of this.  In Fiscal 2013, there were 72 million enrolled in Medicaid at some point during the year.  By fiscal 2017, that number had jumped to 112 million, a staggering 50% increase.  This sort of irresponsible expansion in enrollees into an economically stressed program will only drive it more quickly into bankruptcy and in turn bring on rationing of care, which is already happening as the reimbursement rates are starting to be cut.  http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/112000000-medicaid-enrollees-set-climb-40m-under-obamacare

 

  1. O’BamaCare. So now that repeal legislation failed on the twin rocks of united democrat opposition in the senate and a threesome of RINOs, what next?  There are a lot of things President Trump can do to tighten the screws on congress.  One popular way would be to refuse to fund the 72% subsidy members of congress and their staffers are getting.  Another would be to repeal every single O’BamaCare waiver granted by the previous regime.  A third would be to repeal every single rule and regulation written to implement O’BamaCare out of HHS since it was passed in 2010.  A fourth would be to shut down the subsidy payments paid to insurance companies.  These would be a good start and perhaps encourage O’BamaCare owners in the senate back to the table for a few discussions.  http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/28/how-trump-white-house-can-undermine-obamacare-241092

 

  1. Transgender. Final bit of fun news last week was Trump’s decision to remove transgender people from the military.  This came out of the blue via series of three tweets.  It triggered the expected breathless reaction in opposition.  Picking this fight is a Trump tactic, showing the media and their trained dogs in the democrat party a bright shiny to chase while he is off doing something else.  It also reverses yet another O’Bama effort to turn the military into a social experiment factory rather than something that exists to kill people and break things. As far as I can tell, there is nothing about helping mentally ill people surgically mutilate their bodies that makes us a more deadly and efficient fighting force.

More later –

– AG

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.