Saturday morning roundup

Donna Carol Voss at The Federalist does a magnificent job debunking "Six Ridiculous Arguments in Favor of Transgender Soldiers."

The latest North Korean ICBM test, which demonstrates NK's ability to strike deep into the North American land mass, is all the argument we need for pulling out of the P5+1 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. Appeasement of rogue states with nuclear ambitions leads to ever-more-grim sets of circumstances.

John Merline, writing in the IBD, like many commentators, wants to lambaste McCain and Murkowski for finishing off any hopes of repealing the "A"CA. As I said yesterday, the "skinny repeal" they and many others voted down was no repeal at all. Yes, I realize it was intended to keep the door open to further tinkering, but, based on this Congress's track record for tinkering leading to an actual free-market model, I didn't have much in the way of expectations for it this time. Merline does remind us of why the whole lot of them need a swift kick in the tail end, though. Leaving the "A"CA in place will mean further collapse along these lines:

ObamaCare's premiums have climbed by double digits in both 2016 and 2017, and will do so again in 2018. The number of insurance companies offering plans in the exchanges has steadily declined as their ObamaCare losses mounted. This year, dozens of counties might have zero insurance companies offering plans in their exchanges.

Enrollment in ObamaCare exchanges, which was supposed to be 24 million by now, has stagnated, and the individual market as a whole has shrunk by more than 2 million, largely because those who don't get ObamaCare subsidies can't afford insurance any more.

States that expanded Medicaid are now struggling with the unexpectedly high costs of what was supposed to be a gold mine of free federal money.

Speaking of the "A"CA, Peter Heck at The Resurgent  has a must-read on the morally repugnant spectacle of "faith leaders" supporting it.

Take Brian McClaren who begged his followers to:

“Join nuns from around the country to oppose stripping health care from tens of millions.”

First, McClaren is guilty of bearing false testimony. Left-wing Christian activists Shane Claiborne and William Barber tell the same lie repeatedly (the latter irresponsibly and immorally attributing efforts to undo Obamacare to racism). If the law requires me to purchase a Ford vehicle every year, repealing that law does not “strip” me of a vehicle. It gives me the option whether I want to buy one or not. McClaren, Barber, and Claiborne know this, but they lie for explicitly political reasons.

Allahpundit at Hot Air on how the possibility of a Kid Rock Senate run in Michigan, and the way his polling numbers blow the doors off both Dem and Pub competition, seals the deal for us now being in the age of the celebrity candidate:

Schwarzenegger could be ignored as an idiosyncrasy of California politics. Al Franken could be written off as the lucky winner of one of the tightest Senate elections in U.S. history in a blue-wave year. Trump could be dismissed as sui generis, a billionaire TV star who caught a populist wave just as it was starting to crest. But when “the pimp of the nation” is leading a Democratic incumbent in a battleground Senate race, there’s no going back. President Gary Busey is no longer out of the question.

Streiff at Red State systematizes into eleven points his thoughts on what John Kelly replacing Reince Preibus as White House Chief of Staff means.