Day: May 5, 2014

#benghazi and the Streisand Effect.

As usual, Dan McLaughlin knows what he’s talking about:

The Streisand Effect, of course, refers to the practice “whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.” In this particular case, the information that the Democrats are trying to hide – desperately trying to hide – is that presumed 2016 Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton was not actually a good Secretary of State.  She was, in fact, a disaster, to the point where people died. Continue reading #benghazi and the Streisand Effect.

#Obamacare kills Romneycare in Massachusetts.

Tell me again how brilliant the current administration is.  No, go ahead: I always enjoy a good dose of cathartic laughter.

Massachusetts plans to completely scrap the state’s dysfunctional online health insurance website, deciding that it would be too expensive and time-consuming to fix the overwhelming number of flaws.

Instead, officials will buy an off-the-shelf product used by several other states to enroll residents in health plans, while simultaneously preparing to join the federal HealthCare.gov insurance marketplace if that product fails.

Via David Freddoso, who also noted that this means that Massachusetts traded a statewide universal healthcare system that actually more or less worked, arguably, with a statewide healthcare system that burned down, fell over, and fell into the swamp.  I’m shaking my head with equal fervor, let me tell you – especially since I know that there’s a non-trivial chance that the USSC will tell the government that they can’t actually offer tax subsidies on federal Obamacare policies.  And won’t that just set the cat among the pigeons…

Moe Lane

Welcome to Cultural Appropriation Hell, Mexican-Americans.

Here’s your accordion.

I would recommend against trying to raise a stink about it, though: that was MSNBC, and they only care about white guys exaggerating ethnic stereotypes when the white guys are on other networks besides MSNBC.

Moe Lane

PS: The problem is not whether I care: it’s that MSNBC would have gone into shrieking hysterics if, as Ed Driscoll and Newsbusters noted, this had happened on Fox News. If MSNBC wants to establish itself as an arbiter of proper behavior, they should first make sure that they’re not breaking their own ruleset.

I dunno: *would* Obama have recognized Israel?

Hot Air asks the question.  Come, I will conceal nothing from you: my knee-jerk reaction was to mutter Of course Barack Obama wouldn’t have recognized Israels: too many Jews in it for his liking, you understand.  But that’s actually, well, unfair. I mean, I don’t actually know that the President is an anti-Semite. Obama may simply think that he can’t run the Democratic party without putting up with all the Jew-haters, and he might even be right.

No, I think that what would have happened is this: in Truman’s place, Barack Obama would have been very much an advocate for Israel… on the cheap. Plenty of pretty speeches and high-minded statements. And this would have continued up to the moment when Secretary of State George Marshall (with the rest of the State Department behind him) told Barack Obama to back down, or face the consequences. At that point, you have to ask yourself: does Barack Obama have Harry S Truman’s grit? – Because say what you like about Truman (God knows there’s plenty to say), but give him this: once he decided on something that was it.   Continue reading I dunno: *would* Obama have recognized Israel?

More accusations that Veterans Affairs let veterans Die In Line.

This time, in Colorado.

A VA investigation of one of its outpatient clinics in Colorado reveals how ingrained delays in medical care may be for an agency struggling to rapidly treat nearly 9 million veterans a year amid allegations that dozens have died because of delays.

Clerks at the Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Fort Collins were instructed last year how to falsify appointment records so it appeared the small staff of doctors was seeing patients within the agency’s goal of 14 days, according to the investigation.

Continue reading More accusations that Veterans Affairs let veterans Die In Line.

Supreme Court decides that towns can have opening prayers.

Sounds like Anthony Kennedy had a nice breakfast that day.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a town in upstate New York may begin its public meetings with a prayer from a “chaplain of the month.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision, said “ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond that authority of government to alter or define.”

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the town’s practices could not be reconciled “with the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share of her government.”

The case was Greece v. Galloway, for those interested: Not much further to say on this subject, except for one, probably rude, observation: the NYT has a picture of one of the plaintiffs, and she looks precisely like how I would expect a person willing to take her dislike of Christian opening prayers all the way to the Supreme Court would look like.  …And I’ll just stop there, before I get mean.  Or more mean.