Those betting that post-America can work out its problems smoothly do not have the more convincing argument

 Something felt real off to me about this piece by David Masci at Discourse, the culture-and-ideas journal of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The title, "A Biden-Trump Rematch Is No Reason To Panic." 

Get the idea?

But he does a pretty lame job of selling the message. He spends the first nine paragraphs going over the current horse-race stuff, and the approaches of both camps. Then, in the last two paragraphs, he tries to convince us of his point, laying out two reasons. 

Reason one:

First, while partisans on both sides talk about dictatorial and criminal behavior on the part of both men and others in their orbit, America’s institutions, while themselves flawed, remain strong enough to keep our democracy secure. Recall that the Jan. 6 riot delayed but did not stop Congress from certifying the election results, leading to the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden. Likewise, President Biden’s unauthorized effort to forgive student loans was overturned in the courts. 

Well, it wasn't for lack of trying that the MAGA hordes didn't prevent certification on January 6. The Very Stable Genius told them in person that he'd be "very disappointed" if Pence didn't "do the right thing" and when they got to the Capitol they were within seconds of getting hod of the Vice President. And, yes, that was a nice court slap down of a bad Biden policy, but it's overwhelmed by all the, um, successes he's had elsewhere advancing climate alarmism, militant identity politics, wealth redistribution, and running up the national debt.

Reason two:

But a more important cause for hope is the presence of what my mother used to call “horse sense”—in this case, the horse sense of the American people. Yes, Trump’s and Biden’s grip on their parties mean that, despite what most people say they want, we may soon be faced with a choice between two deeply unpopular, uninspiring candidates. But history shows us that the electorate has a tendency to eventually correct its mistakes. After all, following the ineffective tenures of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, the American people elected Abraham Lincoln. And the post-Watergate malaise of the Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter years was followed by the two-term presidency of Ronald Reagan.

"The American people elected Abraham Lincoln. To preside over a friggin' civil war. And America's cultural rot proceeded apace even through the undeniably great-on-many-levels Reagan years, and we all know the statistics we are now living with for marriage rate and family formation collapse, the collapse of acknowledgement of a transcendent order (as evidenced by church attendance statistics, among other metrics), teen depression rates and declines in academic performance. And then there's the polarization.

Am I being overly doom-focused?

Let's ask some folks around the world:

When I asked the European ambassador to talk to me about America’s deepening partisan divide, I expected a polite brushoff at best. Foreign diplomats are usually loath to discuss domestic U.S. politics.

Instead, the ambassador unloaded for an hour, warning that America’s poisonous politics are hurting its security, its economy, its friends and its standing as a pillar of democracy and global stability.

The U.S. is a “fat buffalo trying to take a nap” as hungry wolves approach, the envoy mused. “I can hear those Champagne bottle corks popping in Moscow — like it’s Christmas every fucking day.”

As voters cast ballots in the Iowa caucuses Monday, many in the United States see this year’s presidential election as a test of American democracy. But, in a series of conversations with a dozen current and former diplomats, I sensed that to many of our friends abroad, the U.S. is already failing that test.

The diplomats are aghast that so many U.S. leaders let their zeal for partisan politics prevent the basic functions of government. It’s a major topic of conversations at their private dinners and gatherings. Many of those I talked to were granted anonymity to be as candid with me as they are with each other.

For example, one former Arab ambassador who was posted in the U.S. during both Republican and Democratic administrations told me American politics have become so unhealthy that he’d turn down a chance to return.

“I don’t know if in the coming years people will be looking at the United States as a model for democracy,” a second Arab diplomat warned.

Many of these conversations wouldn’t have happened a few months ago. There are rules, traditions and pragmatic concerns that discourage foreign diplomats from commenting on the internal politics of another country, even as they closely watch events such as the Iowa caucuses. (One rare exception: some spoke out on America’s astonishing 2016 election.)

But the contours of this year’s presidential campaign, a Congress that can barely choose a House speaker or keep the government open, and, perhaps above all, the U.S. debate on military aid for Ukraine have led some diplomats to drop their inhibitions. And while they were often hesitant to name one party as the bigger culprit, many of the examples they pointed to involved Republican members of Congress.

These foreign diplomats have a better understanding of how to make distinctions between domestic and world-stage policy concerns than a whole lot of post-American lawmakers:

In particular, they criticized the decision to connect the issue of Ukrainian aid and Israeli aid to U.S. border security. Not only did the move tangle a foreign policy issue with a largely domestic one, but border security and immigration also are topics about which the partisan fever runs unusually high, making it harder to get a deal. Immigration issues in particular are a problem many U.S. lawmakers have little incentive to actually solve because it robs them of a rallying cry on the campaign trail.

So now, “Ukraine might not get aid, Israel might not get aid, because of pure polarization politics,” said Francisco Santos Calderón, a former Colombian ambassador to the United States.

They're starting to get proactive as a result of their concern:

So the world’s envoys are reconsidering how their governments can deal with this America for many years and presidents to come.

Some predicted that a Republican win in November would mean their countries would have to become more transactional in their relationship with the United States instead of counting on it as a partner who’ll be there no matter what. Embassies already are beefing up their contacts among Republicans in case they win back the White House.

“Most countries will be in defensive positions, because the asymmetry of power between them and the United States is such that there’s little proactively or offensively that you can do to impact that,” said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States.

When I asked diplomats what advice they’d offer America’s politicians if they were free to do so, several said the same thing: Find a way to overcome your divisions, at least when it comes to issues that reverberate beyond U.S. borders.

We'd do well to heed the more sober voices beyond our borders. There is much to turn around in post-America, and it's not guaranteed that there's time to do it.

 

 

 

 

Follow-up to Wednesday's post about the current juncture in Syria

That post quoted John Bolton as saying that the fact that the US wasn't invited to the current talks between Iran, Turkey and Russia about the Syrian situation is a "precise reflection of the serious diminution of American influence under the Obama administration."

Charles Krauthammer fleshes this out a bit more in a piece at NRO today, calling out the tried and true Leftist red herring that goes something like, "What would you have us do? Invade with a massive influx of ground troops?"

the U.S., at little risk and cost, could have declared Syria a no-fly zone, much as it did Iraqi Kurdistan for a dozen years after the Gulf War of 1991. 

The U.S. could easily have destroyed the regime’s planes and helicopters on the ground and so cratered its airfields as to make them unusable. That would have altered the strategic equation for the rest of the war.

And would have deterred the Russians from injecting their own air force — they would have had to challenge ours for air superiority. Facing no U.S. deterrent, Russia stepped in and decisively altered the balance, pounding the rebels in Aleppo to oblivion. The Russians were particularly adept at hitting hospitals and other civilian targets, leaving the rebels with the choice between annihilation and surrender.

They surrendered.

He then gets to the crux of the worldview embraced by the likes of the Most Equal Comrade that makes for a fading America on the world stage:

Obama has never appreciated that the role of a superpower in a local conflict is not necessarily to intervene on the ground, but to deter a rival global power from stepping in and altering the course of the war. That’s what we did during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Moscow threatened to send troops to support Egypt and President Nixon countered by raising America’s nuclear-alert status to Defcon 3. Russia stood down. 

Less dramatically but just as effectively, American threats of retaliation are what kept West Germany, South Korea, and Taiwan free and independent through half a century of Cold War.

It’s called deterrence. Yet Obama never had the credibility to deter anything or anyone. In the end, the world’s greatest power was reduced to bitter speeches at the U.N. “Are you truly incapable of shame?” thundered U.S. ambassador Samantha Power at the butchers of Aleppo. As if we don’t know the answer. Indeed the shame is on us for terminal naiveté, sending our secretary of state chasing the Russians to negotiate one humiliating pretend cease-fire after another.

Per the previous post, the emerging era is going to be characterized by a number of things, some of which we can foresee and some of which we can't, but it seems fairly certain that planned decline is about to be relegated to the trash heap of history.

More last-minute planned decline from the Most Equal Comrade

Yesterday, it was Arctic oil drilling. Today, the Advancement-Hater-in-Chief sticks it to his old nemesis the coal industry:

At the eleventh hour, the Obama administration on Monday rolled out regulations to crack down on coal mining across the country, a parting shot against the beleaguered industry as the president leaves office.

The regulations, designed to protect America’s streams and waterways from pollution produced during mining operations, will add significant costs to coal mining companies, many of which are struggling to operate.

The Interior Department estimates that it will cost the coal industry about $81 million each year to comply with the rule. The agency stressed that figure is just 0.1 percent of the coal industry’s “aggregate annual revenues.”

“We traveled the country, visited many mines and met with many of the people who work and live in coal country to make sure we wrote the best rule possible — one that is both economically achievable and protective,” said Janice Schneider, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for land and minerals management.

But critics, including leaders in the energy sector and Republicans on Capitol Hill, have said the proposal will be much more expensive and surely will lead to even more layoffs in the industry, which has been losing jobs each year during the Obama administration.
Top Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, said Monday that they intend to work with the incoming Trump administration and scrap the rule early next year.

“The Obama administration is fighting its war on coal to the bitter end. This one rule could have crushing consequences for coal miners, their families and many communities,” Mr. Ryan said in a statement. “If we are going to get America back on track, job-crushing regulations like this must stop. Our unified Republican government will act to provide coal country with relief.” 

Methinks he's going to be one busy totalitarian socialist between now and January 20.

The Most Equal Comrade makes haste while he still has his grip on post-America's throat

He intends to cement his legacy as the first US president to overtly hate human advancement:

Oh my. It’s beginning to seem as if someone could start an entire blog dedicated to nothing but the back alley maneuvers that the outgoing President is attempting in order to “cement his legacy” going forward. A better translation of that would be to say that he’s trying to plant as many landmines as possible to make any reforms intended by Donald Trump more difficult, if not impossible. Now Bloomberg is reporting that there’s a big one coming, though it hasn’t been announced by White House yet. Using a loosely worded provision from a law passed more than half a century ago, Obama is reportedly going to try to permanently ban offshore drilling and oil exploration in regions of the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast. 

President Barack Obama is preparing to block the sale of new offshore drilling rights in much of the U.S. Arctic and parts of the Atlantic, a move that could indefinitely restrict oil production there, according to two people familiar with the decision.

Obama will invoke a provision in a 1953 law that gives him wide latitude to withdraw U.S. waters from future oil and gas leasing, said the people who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced. Until now the law has been used sparingly to preserve coral reefs, walrus feeding grounds and marine sanctuaries.

Coming in the waning days of his administration, Obama’s move — which could come as soon as Tuesday — responds to a clamor from environmental activists who have looked for a way to lock in protections before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Related actions by Canada may be announced at the same time, the people said.

The plan is one that was hatched by drilling protesters earlier this year but didn’t gain any traction at the time. Some of their attorneys were combing through dusty old records and discovered a vague provision in the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. It deals with the procedures approved by Congress wherein the President could arrange for leases of offshore lands for energy exploration and how they would be awarded. Buried in that mountain of legalese is section 12(a) which reads as follows:

Withdrawal of unleased lands by President: The President of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf. 

What does that mean, exactly? The lawyers who have looked at aren’t entirely sure because none of this has apparently ever been challenged in court. Up until now, the provision was only invoked to set aside small sections of the shelf for the protection of certain aquatic creatures and undersea habitats, but no president thus far has attempted to use it to shut down entire sections of the shelf from drilling.

If Barack Obama does this, couldn’t Donald Trump simply undo it with the stroke of a pen? Again.. nobody is exactly sure. 

As LITD readers of any length of time know, this blog is no fan of Squirrel-Hair, but it is hoped that he gets to work right away on this, consulting the best legal minds he can summon.

Barack Obama has been a horror for the United States of America.

The Most Equal Comrade breathes down the neck of the Army Corps of Engineers

Heavy-handed tactics continue to characterize this regime right up until the last mini=ute of its sordid existence:

Throwing yet another wrench into what has long since been settled law in the courts, the Army Corps of Engineers (CoE) issued another conflicting announcement this weekend in which they claimed that an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline to go under Lake Oahe would not be granted. This, of course, had the professional protesters in the area celebrating and the company building the project shaking their heads in disbelief. (CNN))

The Army will not approve an easement that would allow the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota, the Army’s assistant secretary for civil works announced Sunday.

Jo-Ellen Darcy said in a press release she based her decision on a need to explore alternate routes for the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing. It was announced on November 14, 2016 that her office was delaying the decision on the easement to allow for discussions with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose reservation lies 0.5 miles south of the proposed crossing.

As NBC News was reporting yesterday, both Energy Transfer Partners (the owners of the project) and both of the state’s senators called foul and said that these delays and harassment would end once Obama leaves office.

Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the project, denounced the decision Sunday night as “a purely political action.”

“The White House’s directive today to the Corps for further delay is just the latest in a series of overt and transparent political actions by an administration which has abandoned the rule of law in favor of currying favor with a narrow and extreme political constituency,” it said in a statement…

Sen. John Hoeven, R-North Dakota, said the decision”violates the rule of law and fails to resolve the issue. Instead, it passes the decision off to the next administration, which has already indicated it will approve the easement, and in the meantime perpetuates a difficult situation for North Dakotans.”

Just to be clear, this obviously wasn’t a move which was made in a vacuum by the CoE. This came straight from the White House with the backing of the Justice Department. It was over a month ago when the Army began making noises about “looking at an alternate route” in response to the protests. But keep in mind that the current route is the one which the Army already approved and it was that approval which formed the basis for the state Public Service Commission’s decision to provide final approval. That approval was twice challenged in court and upheld both times.

The Institute for Energy Research has been following the legal aspects of this case with regular updates and last night they issued the following statement. 

“The Obama administration’s decision to strong-arm the Army Corps of Engineers is a violation of the rule of law that will chill investment in safe energy infrastructure. Much worse, it will unnecessarily escalate the tense situation on the ground between law enforcement and the protestors. It is unfortunate that in the sunset of his presidency, Obama chose to inflame rather than heal with this symbolic, but short-lived decision.”

“Symbolic but short lived” is the key takeaway here. This wasn’t a decision based in engineering, the law or science. It was a political move in which the Army Corps of Engineers had their arms twisted by the White House.

Can you imagine the garment-rending and gnashing of teeth that will be taking place among the planned-decline crowd when President Squirrel-Hair grants the easement next month?

What you need to know about the Dakota Access Pipeline

Here's another situation at the bloody crossroads where human advancement and planned decline meet.

North Dakota Representative Kevin Kramer, writing at the Daily Signal, lays out the relevant facts - cultural, economic and procedural - about the pipeline that has been the focus of such recent protest:

This 1,172-mile Dakota Access pipeline will deliver as many as 570,000 barrels of oil a day from northwestern North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to connect to existing pipelines in Illinois. It will do this job far more safely than the current method of transporting it by 750 rail cars a day.

The protesters say they object to the pipeline’s being close to the water intake of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. However, this should be of no concern as it will sit approximately 92 feet below the riverbed, with increased pipe thickness and control valves at both ends of the crossing to reduce the risk of an incident, which is already low.

Just like the companies that run the 10 other fossil-fuel pipelines crossing the Missouri River upstream of Standing Rock, Energy Transfer Partners—the primary funder of this pipeline—is taking all necessary precautions to ensure that the pipeline does not leak.

But even if there were a risk, Standing Rock will soon have a new water intake that is nearing completion much further downstream near Mobridge, South Dakota.

From the outset of this process, Standing Rock Sioux leaders have refused to sit down and meet with either the Army Corps of Engineers or the pipeline company.

The Army Corps consulted with 55 Native American tribes at least 389 times, after which they proposed 140 variations of the route to avoid culturally sensitive areas in North Dakota. The logical time for Standing Rock tribal leaders to share their concerns would have been at these meetings, not now when construction is already near completion.

The original pipeline was always planned for south of Bismarck, despite false claims that it was originally planned for north of Bismarck and later moved, thus creating a greater environmental danger to the Standing Rock Sioux.

The real reasons for not pursuing the northern route were that the pipeline would have affected an additional 165 acres of land, 48 extra miles of previously undisturbed field areas, and an additional 33 waterbodies.

It would also have crossed zones marked by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration as “high consequence” areas, and would have been 11 miles longer than the preferred and current route.

Will this change the minds of any of those posting on Facebook in solidarity with the protesters?

 

Racing against the clock to squeeze in as much planned decline as possible

Just one more thing for the new Congress / administration to undo:

The Obama administration on Friday banned offshore drilling in the Arctic, setting a likely collision course with President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to “unleash” new energy production in the United States by rolling back restrictions on oil and gas companies.

The move by the Interior Department, part of a new five-year plan for energy development in federal waters, would put a temporary end to exploration in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off the Alaskan coast. It also dropped plans to allow companies to drill for oil and natural gas in the Atlantic Ocean off of four southeastern states, including Virginia.

“The plan focuses on lease sales in the best places — those with highest resource potential, lowest conflict, and established infrastructure — and removes regions that are simply not right to lease,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement Friday. “Given the unique and challenging Arctic environment and industry’s declining interest in the area, forgoing lease sales in the Arctic is the right path forward.”

The WaPo article goes on to cite government officials and energy-industry figures who say that these areas are of declining interest in terms of oil extraction.

But if you read far enough, it also offers a countervailing view:

 . . . representatives of the oil and gas industry called the decision a short-sighted one that could cost American jobs.

“Our national energy security depends on our ability to produce oil and natural gas here in the U.S., and this decision could very well increase the cost of energy for American consumers and close the door on creating new jobs and new investments for years,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute. “We are hopeful the incoming administration will reverse this decision.”

Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation also slammed the decision to strip leases from the government’s five-year plan, saying it would prevent access to vast resources that could help grow the economy.

“We have shown that Arctic development is one of the best ways to create jobs, generate revenues, and refill the Trans-Alaska Pipeline,” Sen. Lisa Murkowsi (R-Alaska), said in a statement, adding that she was “infuriated” by the Obama administration’s decision. “Why the president is willing to send all of those benefits overseas is beyond explanation.” 

There's no explanation for why the Most Equal Comrade's regime would foreclose on any possible source of US oil other than to stick it to the cause of human advancement in America. Or, on a more personal level, stick it to the incoming government.

 

A recipe obviously founded on intentional decline

Stephen Moore at Townhall on the five worst features of Madame BleachBit's economic policy:

1. Raise the Minimum Wage to $12 or Even $15 an Hour: She might as well call this the Teenage Job Elimination Act. Even using the methodology of the liberal Congressional Budget Office shows that a $12 minimum wage would reduce the number of starter jobs by as many as 770,000. Seattle recently raised its minimum wage to $11 and is headed to $15. An independent assessment by the University of Washington finds that so far the law has had the "negative unintended consequence" of fewer hours worked and fewer jobs. Is this what we want for the nation?

2. Hike Income Tax Rates: There is virtually no economic philosophy that holds that raising taxes will help the economy. But Hillary Clinton is going to give it a try -- to the tune of $1.5 trillion sucked out of the economy.

3. Subsidize 500 Million Solar Panels: We tried these green-energy handouts under Barack Obama and they were a failure. (Remember Solyndra?)

4. Offer Free College Tuition: It's one of the greatest financial scandals in America today -- the exorbitant fees that universities and colleges are charging students. Some colleges now cost an annual $60,000 for room, board and tuition, and the average cost is near $30,000. But if the students and the families aren't paying these costs, taxpayers will, and costs will spike even higher. Universities will raise their tuitions, as they have every time the government provides more subsidies through Pell Grants. A better idea would be to require every school to freeze tuition for four or five years as a condition of receiving any federal aid. Purdue University has done this. Why not require schools with billion-dollar-plus endowments to use some of that money to lower the tuition for families?

5. Increase Social Security Benefits: Clinton wants to fatten benefits to certain senior citizens, and she wants to raise the tax on Social Security to "pay for it." Really? The system is already tens of trillions of dollars in the red, according to the Social Security Administration's own actuaries. Are we now going to increase the outflow and make even bigger benefit promises? Clinton would also apply the payroll tax of 12.4 percent on wages of up to $250,000 (up from about $110,000 today), which would be one of the biggest tax increases of all time. Let's rein in the entitlement programs, not expand them.

Madame BleachBit seems bent on making collective realization of LITD's First Law of Economics - the money has to come from somewhere - as painful as possible.

The sum total of the above five "ideas" is an acceleration of the hobbling of post-America that has been the overarching vision of the regime that has been gripping the nation's throat for the last eight years.

Those post-Americans who still cherish freedom must wage total war against it.

 

 

 

East Asia pivots away from post-America

The fruits of world-stage planned decline:

Under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the U.S. “pivoted” to Asia. Unfortunately, Asia seems now to be pivoting away from the U.S.

As noted here, the Philippines, under its president Rodrigo Duterte, has turned away from America and towards to China. Duterte explained:

America has lost now. I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow. And maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world: China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way.

Malaysia seems to agree. Calling himself “a true friend of China, its prime minister Najib Razak arrived in China yesterday promising significantly closer defense ties with the Asian giant. Indeed, he is set to sign a major naval with China, said to be the first significant military agreement between the two countries.

Duterte may be overstating things when he says “American has lost,” but there’s no doubt that, under Obama, America is losing. From the Middle East to the South China Sea, the Malaysian leader sees the same weakness Duterte perceives.

Other Asian nations perceive it too. Vietnam, unwilling until recently to tilt towards China, is seeking new ties with its old enemy. The Vietnamese prime minister visited China in September. And Thailand’s military government is buying submarines from China. 

Then there's this east Asian nation, which clearly feels no post-American constraints on its strategic aims.

Let's check in with the "A"CA

Disaster looms in the land of lakes:

The Minnesota state insurance commissioner says the state's Obamacare insurance exchange is "near collapse" and to save it, insurers must raise their rates on average by 60% and allow the companies to limit enrollment.

Bloomberg:

“It’s in an emergency situation -- we worked hard and avoided a collapse.” Rothman said in a telephone interview. “It’s a stopgap for 2017.”
On average, rates in the state will rise by about 60 percent, said Shane Delaney, a spokesman for MNSure, the state’s marketplace for Obamacare plans. About 250,000 people, or 5 percent of the state’s population, were covered under plans bought on the individual market, including plans bought on the Affordable Care Act markets as well as outside it.
Many people in the exchanges are eligible for tax credits to help reduce the cost of the premiums, Rothman’s office said, though those subsidies cut off once a family of four has an income of $97,200 or more. The law requires all Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty. In Minnesota, a low-cost plan for a single person last year had annual premiums of about $2,800, before any tax credits, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Most of the insurers in Minnesota’s individual market also plan to limit enrollment, to avoid taking on too many customers from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, which is leaving the exchanges after financial losses, the state said. Taking on too many new customers could harm insurers’ finances or overwhelm the doctors and hospitals that they contract with.
Jonathan Gold, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said Minnesotans would still have affordable options for coverage next year. “Headline rate changes do not reflect what these consumers actually pay because tax credits reduce the cost of coverage below the sticker price,” Gold said in a statement.
Of the about 70,000 people who had insurance on the Obamacare markets this year, 63 percent got subsidies last year, according to the commissioner’s office.

Mr. Gold is delusional. Thousands of families in Minnesota will bear the full brunt of premium increases. Even those who receive subsidies will pay more for their insurance this year. The idea of "affordable" health insurance in Minnesota is a cruel joke.

The recent exit of Blue Cross Blue Shield from the exchange has reduced consumer options to the bare minimum. This is something we are going to see in other states with federal exchanges as companies can no longer bear the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses they are experiencing and pull out of the program.

Follows on the heels if Indiana University Health leaving that state's exchange, Aetna, Humana and United Health pulling out of most exchanges, and the CBO estimating that over the next decade the "A"CA will add $1.4 trillion to the nation's debt.

You have to admire the elegance with which the overlords have executed their Cloward-Piven  designs.

The question looms larger yet: failure born of incompetence, or by Cloward-Piven design?

We know beyond doubt that the Most Equal Comrade and his Freedom-Hater associates in Congress told us blatant falsehoods about keeping our plans and doctors, and how the"A"CA was going to put health care in post-America on a more stable and equitable footing.

It's plain to all that it has not worked out that way:

When Health Republic Insurance of New Jersey announced recently that it’s $46 million in debt and shutting down, it became the 17th failed ObamaCare co-op since the Affordable Care Act launched three years ago.

Those failures – just six of the original 23 co-ops remain – have left hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for coverage. 

Meanwhile, insurers claiming big losses are leaving some state exchanges -- including Indiana University Health Plans, whose exit is expected to result in 27,000 Indiana residents losing ObamaCare plans in 2017. And companies still operating in the federal and state exchanges are raising premiums for next year. 

Together, the developments are posing new challenges for Americans seeking affordable coverage, and show the highly touted overhaul of the country’s health care system is in some cases not yielding the savings President Obama once promised.

As a candidate on the campaign trail in 2008, Obama once said: “If you’ve got health insurance, we’re going to help that employer save $2,500 per family per year. … Those savings are going to be passed along to the workers.”

Nationally, though, premium hikes are expected to average 8 percent next year. Many insurance companies are seeking much more than that, for the exchange plans and those offered to employers. 

Premera in Washington state is approved to charge 19 percent more next year. Rates across California will go up an average of 13 percent. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas is asking to raise premiums a stunning 60 percent.

Long-time critics of ObamaCare say they saw it coming.

“That basic promise, that it’s going to make health care more affordable, it’s not making health care more affordable,” said Avik Roy, an author and Republican adviser. “It’s making health care more expensive, especially for the uninsured.” 

The problem remains a risk pool with too many sick people and not enough who are young and healthy. Also, federal backstop programs, aimed at helping companies that miscalculated how much to charge, are now expired. So insurance companies need higher premiums to cover payouts to doctors and hospitals.

The alternative is pulling out of health exchanges, which many companies have been doing. In recent months Aetna, United Health Care and several Blue Cross and Blue Shield subsidiaries have announced they will be leaving many of the exchanges in 2017.

“That’s going to be the future,” said Roger Stark of the Washington Policy Center in Washington State. “What we’re seeing here is the beginning of a death spiral as far as exchanges are concerned as more companies pull out.” 

In Indiana, the company pulling out of the exchange had covered 15 percent of those covered under ObamaCare. Indiana Sen. Dan Coats, a Republican, told The Washington Times this is further evidence the health care law is “collapsing before our eyes.”

Yet Madame BleachBit's solution is to double down. A public option.

Again, you have to ask if this was just a colossal oopsie or orchestrated socioeconomic decline.

In other words, are these people merely buffoons, or are they the most sinister kind of liar?

The Most Equal Comrade uses final UN address to once again diss the country he rules over

True to form, the MEC uses a podium in front of a global audience to once again point up what he sees as post-America's shortcomings:

1. In America, there's too much money in politics.
2. There's also too much "entrenched partisanship."
3. Too few Americans are civically engaged.
4. A "patchwork of laws" in America set out to make it hard for Americans to vote.
5. Considering our founding ideals, America has made “our share of mistakes over these last 25 years.” 
6. The only way the world will become more secure is for powerful nations like America to “accept constraints.”
7. For believing that all countries must adhere to certain "international norms," many Americans criticize Obama.
8. Too many in Washington believe all of the problems in the world can be solved by Washington.
9. As president, he's helped "curb" America’s “excesses of capitalism.”
10. America has “undermined unions,” which has destroyed manufacturing jobs. 
11. In calling for greater respect and tolerance, Obama also likened racial discrimination in the U.S. to ethnic discrimination in Burundi and and religious discrimination in Burma. 

The Great Leveling Project - the Most Equal Comrade's overarching life mission. Making sure no one thinks of the United States of America as a worthy and needed moral, economic and military leader.

Worst president ever. Worse than Carter, Jackson or Buchanan. At least each of them had some kind of love of America, however peculiar.

The Most Equal Comrade added 18 more items of proof that he disdains the country he presides over on his Asia trip

Here they are:

1. There are still too many poor children in the United States
2. Too many children in America are not getting enough to eat
3. Despite America's wealth, we’re not providing sufficient educational resources in poor communities
4. America lacks the “political will” to help poor inner cities that have suffered discrimination.
5. Americans are “lazy” in thinking we don’t need to learn about foreign nations.
6. Colin Kapernack is justified protesting the National Anthem, as the NFL star is raising “real, legitimate issues” about things America needs to be talked about. 
7. America suffers from racism, conflicts between ethnic groups, and discrimination against immigrants.
8. Criticisms of America being imperfect and having problems with racism discrimination are accurate.
9. America still has “situations where women are not treated equally.”
10. America “didn't think through” our policy in Vietnam War, as dropping cluster bombs proved counterproductive to "winning hearts and minds."
11. America’s treatment of Native Americans was “tragic.”
12. America “struggled to stay true” to our founding ideal that all men are created equal.
13. When the environment is destroyed in America, it’s because the private sector is being “lazy."
14. The United States is still to this day learning how to develop industry without destroying the environment.
15. Due to industrialization, America “used to have terrible pollution … everywhere.”
16. America’s role in the Vietnam war led to mass displacement of people from their homes.
17. America dropped more bombs on Laos than on Germany and Japan during World War II … more than 2 million bombs … “the bombs fell like rain.” More bombs, he said on several occasions, were dropped on Laos per capita than anywhere else in the world.
18. We bombed the “simple homes” of civilians in Laos. “Villages and entire allies were obliterated.” The ancient Plain of Jars “was devastated.” Countless civilians were killed. 

The architect of the Great Leveling Project.

The Most Equal Comrade, once again, while on foreign soil, takes the opportunity to diss the nation he "presides" over

Today in Laos:

Speaking at a town hall held Wednesday in Luang Prabang, Laos, President Barack Obamatwice suggested that Americans are “lazy”when it comes to the environment and learning other cultures.

“Usually, if you see the environment destroyed, it’s not because that’s necessary for development,” Obama told the Laotian audience. “It’s usually because we are being lazy, and we’re not being as creative as we could be about how to do it in the smarter, sustainable way.”

Later Obama used similar language when discussing American culture. “I believe that the United States is and can be a force for good in the world,” he said. “But because we’re such a big country, we haven’t always had to know about other parts of the world.”

“If you are in Laos, you need to know about Thailand and China and Cambodia, because you’re a small country and they’re right next-door and you need to know who they are. If you’re [in] the United States, sometimes you can feel lazy and think we’re so big we don’t have to really know anything about other people,” he concluded.

Yes, indeed, that's the way to present the citizens of the nation whose throat you have a death grip on you govern.

Mind you, he said this after post-America had been treated like an ugly stepsister at G-20:

When Obama flew into China on Saturday, he was not welcomed in traditional diplomatic fashion with a red carpet and mobile staircase allowing him to descend from Air Force One. Instead, the president disembarked the aircraft using a back exit after touching down in Hangzhou.

At the same time, Chinese officials corralled American reporters behind a rope, preventing them from witnessing Obama’s arrival and sparking skirmishes with White House officials. A Chinese official confronted Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, on the tarmac and tried to prevent her from bypassing the media rope line and walking to the president’s motorcade, prompting the Secret Service to intervene.

The same Chinese official was caught on video shouting at a White House press aide who was showing foreign journalists where to stand as Obama exited Air Force One, according to Reuters. “This is our plane. We’re standing under the wing,” the aide said. “This is our country. This is our airport. Okay?” a Chinese official shouted back at her.

The scuffles occurred just before Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared together to announce their countries’ formal adoption of the international climate change deal brokered in Paris last December.

The president’s reception in China was widely viewed as embarrassing, though Obama sought to downplay the incident. “I wouldn’t overcrank the significance,” the president told reporters of the airport confrontations on Sunday.

Meanwhile, China blamed the American media for the incident. China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Monday that it was a “small episode,” knocking the “highly unprofessional” U.S. media for “making an issue out of it.”

As world leaders gathered at the G-20 Summit, China also appeared to be bucking U.S. warnings in the South China Sea. According to accounts from Philippine officials, at least eight Chinese vessels including four Chinese coast guard ships, were witnessed in the area of the disputed Scarborough Shoal in recent days.

I really try not to engage in ad hominem vitriol, but this guy has proven over and over in the last eight years that he has dog vomit where most people have souls.

Post-America, the world's biggest, wealthiest banana republic

Supremely important piece by Jed Babbin at The American Spectator today.

How's this for a money line?

The differences between Obama’s America and Maduro’s Venezuela are defined only by degree.

His overall point is that the architects who have brought post-America to this point are Madame Bitbleach and the Most Equal Comrade. Each are driven by particular ratios of power-lust and a planned-decline ideology.

In Hillionaire's case,  the power-lust is predominant, and has led to corrupt behavior and a knack for intimidating impartial institutions we probably have never seen in this nation's history:

The newly-released FBI documents on the investigation of Hillary Clinton make it clear beyond argument that the fix was in and that the FBI never had any intention of recommending that she should be prosecuted for her crimes.

That is very hard to write. I have had very good friends among the agents of the FBI, men of unshakeable dedication to the fair enforcement of the law. But that is no longer the FBI’s goal, as just a few references to the documents published last week reveal.

First, you had to notice that the FBI agreed that there would be no videotape of its interview of Clinton. Not only would there not be a videotape, but no court reporter would be present to record a transcript. That itself is highly unusual, but there is far more, and far worse.

Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, had to have participated in sending classified material to Clinton on her private and unsecured “clintonemail.com” email system. Yet when the FBI questioned Clinton, Mills was permitted to attend as one of Clinton’s lawyers. That is not only unethical under the Bar’s unenforced ethics standards, but obviously a huge violation of the most elementary of FBI procedures that requires witnesses — and possible suspects — to be questioned separately in isolation from one another.

Clinton told the FBI that she relied on others’ judgment in sending her sensitive information on the unsecured email system. She also claimed that as a result of a head injury she didn’t recall key events such as being trained by the State Department on handing classified information or retaining records in accordance with federal law.

Clinton, as a U.S. senator, served on the Armed Services Committee from 2003 to 2009. She was a member of three subcommittees, including the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. In that capacity, she would have been instructed on how to handle highly-classified information and a great deal of it would have passed through her hands. She would have had many occasions to handle it and to transmit it among her colleagues and staff and executive branch officials. Further training by the State Department would have been unnecessary for her to know how such information had to be protected against disclosure.

Clinton’s obvious lie was one of many she told the FBI. Let’s remember that on at least one occasion, she told her State Department staff to remove the classified markings on some material and send it “in the clear” on an unsecured channel — her private email system.

The FBI found that Clinton had used a multitude of Blackberry and other personal devices while she was secretary of state. Thirteen of them are missing and have never been recovered. Anyone who has used a Blackberry or other personal email device can testify that they last for years. Clinton, while she was secretary of state, apparently got a new one every six or eight weeks. All of those devices, given the frequency of her communications, would have had classified information on them.

How compromised was the FBI in its balancing act between its actual mission and the hot breath of the Clinton machine on its neck?

 . . . in his July statement, FBI director Comey said that of Clinton’s State Department emails, “…110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. “

Comey’s statement included the fact that, “Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.” Clinton knew or should have known that the subject matter of those emails was classified because, for example, some discussed coming drone strikes against terrorists.

For all of Clinton’s lies, and there are far too many to recount, the worst lie of all was Comey’s. He said that there was no precedent for a prosecution of someone who had behaved as Clinton had and that no responsible prosecutor would bring charges. (Former CIA directors John Deutch and David Petraeus each pled guilty to mishandling classified information. Deutch was pardoned in 2001 by Bill Clinton.)

Comey also said that there was evidence that Clinton and her staff had handled classified information in an “extremely careless” way. Title 18 Section 793(f) says that anyone who is “grossly negligent” in handling classified information is guilty of a federal felony.
If we cannot trust the FBI to enforce the law, and we cannot, America is now characterized by one of the two facts defining a banana republic.

As a parting shot, the FBI also found that several email accounts that Clinton had communicated with while secretary of state had been intercepted (hacked) by hostile foreign actors, but that they couldn’t determine if Clinton’s email was hacked.
Russia, China, Iran and al-Qaida will have intercepted Clinton’s emails as a matter of policy. If she isn’t guilty of the federal felony described by Title 18 U.S. Code Section 793(f), I’ll eat her classified emails.

And, oh, by the way, Clinton sent classified information on her private email system after she left the secretary of state job. (That’s a separate crime, but who’s counting?) The bad guys surely have those emails as well.

In the Most Equal Comrade's case,  we're looking at a man with a more coherent core ideology than that of Hillionaire (although, to be sure, her Alinskyite roots still shape her way of operating). The MEC is and always has been focused on the Great Leveling Project, both domestically and abroad. He wants to hobble post-America's energy robustness, and thereby its economy (and is willing to sherd the Constitution to do so) and he wants to knock it down a peg on the world stage, even if it means a mortal enemy gets a nuclear arsenal:

The other revelation last week was David Albright’s report on President Obama’s nuclear deal.

Mr. Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security (not to be confused with the other ISIS) reported that the international commission running Obama’s nuclear weapons deal with Iran has, in secret, allowed Iran to pretend to obey the deal’s conditions while violating them.

Albright’s report says that by the deal’s effective date, Iran was obligated to perform certain tasks in order to qualify for relief from the international sanctions that had been imposed. Among them was the disposal of low-enriched uranium (LEU), a limitation on its “hot cells,” and the shipment out of Iran of “heavy water” (deuterium oxide).

Iran didn’t dispose of, by shipment to another nation or otherwise, the required amount of LEU, leaving it more than enough to further enrich it to produce nuclear weapons. The “hot cells” — which can be used to produce plutonium, another key ingredient of some nuclear weapons — hadn’t been reduced in size to prevent the plutonium production. And the heavy water had been shipped to Yemen, where it remains under Iranian control.

Under the awful Corker Amendment (more fully discussed here) all side agreements, secret or not, were required to be disclosed to the senate. As a couple of senators have said publicly — and one to told me directly but privately — they weren’t.

Over the weekend, Obama signed the latest economy-killing global warming deal. Both the BBC and the Washington Post reported the event as U.S. ratification of the deal. Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that only the Senate can ratify a treaty.

Which results in the definition of Obama’s Iran deal being precisely concurrent with the other factor defining a banana republic. Obama’s autocratic foreign policy has been conducted in secret, and in opposition to our national security interests.

The two most powerful figures in post-America's Freedom-Hater party.

Makes it a little trickier for us individual citizens to maintain some kind of control over our fate, doesn't it?

Saturday roundup

This is the essence of the aloofness, skewed priorities and federal-level heavy-handedness with which the Most Equal Comrade and his Justice Department tyrannize post-America:

President Obama has refused so far to survey the Louisiana flood disaster, but he did let state and local officials know that he’s watching to make sure they don’t engage in racial discrimination.

In a 16-page guidance issued Tuesday, the Obama administration, led by the Justice Department, warned Louisiana recipients of federal disaster assistance against engaging in “unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin (including limited English proficiency).”

The guidance’s frameworks “highlight the importance of complying with nondiscrimination requirements of civil rights statutes, addressing the needs of the whole community, and ensuring equal opportunity to access recovery efforts.”

Needless to say, some Louisiana residents were offended, including the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher, who took umbrage at receiving an anti-discrimination lecture from Washington, D.C., as locals struggle to rescue, house and feed their neighbors.

“[E]verywhere you look you can find black folks and white folks loving on each other, helping each other through this crisis,” Mr. Dreher said in a Thursday post.

He referred to the guidance as a “long bureaucratic memo” issued by the “Department of Justice and many other agencies of the executive branch overseen by He Who Cannot Be Troubled to Leave Martha’s Vineyard.”

Charles Krauthammer at NRO on how theMEC's agenda of planned decline has create a vacuum that Russia is only too glad to fill:

his week Russian bombers flew out of Iranian air bases to attack rebel positions in Syria. The State Department pretended not to be surprised. It should be. It should be alarmed. Iran’s intensely nationalistic revolutionary regime had never permitted foreign forces to operate from its soil. Until now. The reordering of the Middle East is proceeding apace.

Where for 40 years the U.S.–Egypt alliance anchored the region, a Russia–Iran condominium is now dictating events. That’s what you get after eight years of U.S. retrenchment and withdrawal. That’s what results from the nuclear deal with Iran, the evacuation of Iraq, and utter U.S. immobility on Syria. 

He goes on to enumerate other fronts on which Russia is showing the world who's picking up the chalk and chairing the meeting, such as the eight staging areas along the Ukraine border where Russia has amassed tanks, artillery and troops, as well as the joint naval exercises with China in the South China Sea.

Speaking of Russia, don't think that, just because Manafort has resigned as Squirrel-Hair's campaign manager, S-H's Russia issues are all resolved:

Navy Senior Chief Michael Nance was on MSNBC discussing the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, and he believes there is another bomb yet to drop.

Nance, as well as many in the intelligence community, believe it is quite possible that Russian intelligence agent(s) were embedded within the Trump campaign. This goes along with the theory that many believe to be true; Russia is seeking to influence the Presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, their preferred candidate. Trump has repeatedly called for better ties with Russia, even at the cost of abandoning our NATO allies.

Manafort was let go from the Trump campaign presumedly to save face after evidence began to surface of his ties with Russia, but it is concerning that the Trump campaign didn't actually care about Manafort's ties until there was actual evidence. Now this isn't some cold war fiction novel, and there is probably not a horde of Russian spies embedded within Trump's campaign, but these ties to Russia could be deeper than we thought before. Hopefully the American people see this as alarming, as Russia is one of the last countries on Earth that we want to be aligning with.

Not if you listen to Squirrel-Hair.

The Stupid Party is finally looking at a strategy for legislative races in the event of the nearly inevitable:

Republicans, worried about preserving their House and Senate majorities in the face of fierce headwinds, are accelerating their plans to distance themselves from Donald Trump – and may soon concede, if only implicitly, his defeat.

Party strategists are mapping out blueprints for down-ballot candidates, in TV ads and on the campaign trail, to present themselves as checks on a Hillary Clinton presidency. It’s an approach that would essentially admit a Trump loss. In interviews, nearly one dozen Republican operatives said they had begun poll-testing the idea – which one labeled a “break glass in case of emergency” strategy - to gauge how the public would react to it.

Do you think Assad gives a diddly about post-America's support for the Kurds?

Syrian regime jets pounded US-backed Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria for a second day, even after the US-led coalition scrambled jets to protect its military advisers working on the ground.

In another escalation of Syria's bloody conflict, warplanes from President Bashar al-Assad's regime were bombarding the city of Hasakeh -- targeting Kurdish forces that for months have worked closely with coalition military advisers helping local fighters combat the Islamic State group.

On Thursday, the United States sent fighter jets to head off air strikes conducted by regime planes and to protect coalition advisers, but the Syrian planes had left by the time they arrived.

I wonder if Hillionaire still thinks of Assad as a "stabilizing force."

I din't really watch any of the Olympics. Generally speaking, my interest in them is passing at best. But what a sad capper the Ryan Locate affair is on a summer Olympics characterized by an opening ceremony that emphasized "climate change" hooey, raw sewage in the swimming water, severed body parts washing up on the beach, and Arab athletes refusing to compete against Israelis. That 32-year-old man-boy needs a spanking.




 

How's this for a noteworthy statistic?

The architect of post-America's planned decline is no doubt very pleased with his signature economic accomplishment:

People often use the word "historic" whenever our President so much as breathes out of his left nostril. Now we finally have an example of him doing something we can actually use the word for.

Barack Obama will leave a legacy with many different accomplishments, such as a failed government controlled healthcare law, the most racially divided country since the 60's, and God knows how many broken promises.

But one of those things he can take with him when he leaves office is the fact that he will be the first President to ever leave office without having achieved at least one year of 3% GDP growth.

The Great Leveling Project continues apace.