Daily Musings 4/1/2016

WAPO Headlines:
1. WAPO: The worst stereotype of the GOP is coming to life in the form of Donald Trump - Michael Gerson Yet another tirade against the GOP front runner to pave the way to a Hilary victory. Attacks abortion. It turns out that Trump wants to punish women, not as he said, under current Federal Law, if Roe b Wade is eliminated, there would be such punishments. Trump definitely screwed up the answer, because he is not a politician, because he accepts what if questions, because he is transparent. So if transparency and answering all questions is not preferable to the opacity and the careful crafting of answers before hand shown by Hilary, Obama, and indeed all "politicians" then you want a politician, and his $$$ backers as president. Not what I want at least.

 Gerson then lies on Trumps other plans. Not worth getting into. The idea is: WHEN DEALING WITH A NON POLITICIAN WHO ANSWERS QUESTIONS, DESTROY HIM FOR LACK OF GRAMMAR, TAKE HIS POINTS TO ALL POSSIBLE EXTREMES, AND NEVER UNDERSTAND HIM, OR TRY TO.

This is great for all pundits, but it is beneath those who believe human beings should be transparent, tell us what they think, and let us evaluate them as humans, not caricatures.

2. Why is America ignoring 23 million ex cons  by Eberstadt. Point? We are ignoring our oppressed minorities, 12M ilegal aliens and 23M ex cons who cycle through our prisons. As usual, Nicholas phrases it as: "a higher share of its populace in jail or prison than virtually any other country" instead of "why aren't other countries applying their laws with the efficacy of the US?" or "Why do so many people in the US commit crimes" or even "Do we criminalize too much behavior?"  Somehow numbers are more important than reasons.  Funny, peculiar, and totally PC.

In my tweeting I came across this item about Iran's interest and interference with Africa: 

Daily Roundup - Jan 19, 2016

Algemeiner: Kerry-Iran-has-massive-needs

The message is that since they need more than the 150B we are giving them to cover their debts, they won't be using them to create havoc in the ME.

The problem is they already are creating havoc, and have for decades, in spite of their money problems. 150B will not make them feel worse, or alienate their creditors. If they could create havoc before, they can now do more because they have paid of a good portion of their debt.

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Twitter: Discussion with Liam Donovan

Liam is trying to convince voters not yet completely for Trump to leave him on the ground that he profited from illegal  immigration. The problem with this is that anyone who built a house or invested in real estate profited so all are excluded. Only Rubio remains, because he doesn't know how to budget and never accumulated any wealth.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The same 2 stories discussed in the last blog continued to dominate the news.  To these were added the death of Mandela, and the freezing of most of the East Coast last week, and the Middle East this week.

1.       The continuing sage of Obama care.

2.       The continuing dance with the Iranians.

3.       The Cold spell

4.       The death of Mandela

Obama Care

I did not fully understand the reason for the Atomic Option.  Besides making it possible to nominate and appoint Obama appointees, the nuclear option clears the way to pack the DC Circuit Court of appeals which is defined as follows in the Wikipedia:

While it has the smallest geographic jurisdiction of any of the United States courts of appeals, the D.C. Circuit, with eleven active judgeships, is arguably the most important inferior appellate court. The court is given the responsibility of directly reviewing the decisions and rulemaking of many federal independent agencies of the United States government based in the national capital, often without prior hearing by a district court. Aside from the agencies whose statutes explicitly direct review by the D.C. Circuit, the court typically hears cases from other agencies under the more general jurisdiction granted to the Courts of Appeals under the Administrative Procedure Act. Given the broad areas over which federal agencies have power, this often gives the judges of the D.C. Circuit a central role in affecting national U.S. policy and law.^[1]

It has been the path to the Supreme Court for Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Ginsburg and Kagan. Packing the court makes the appellate process for challenges to the Obama Care excesses so much more difficult. 

In the meantime, the Obama front end seems to have improved to the point of accepting information and probably storing it without too many errors.  Unfortunately, the back end (database management, searches through the various government departments for the status of an applicant in order to evaluate whether he/she receives government support) seem totally undeveloped, or developed so poorly that they have been uncoupled from the front end.

As a result, applications are not being routed to Insurance Companies electronically, and money is not being accepted to seal the deal with these companies.  On January 1^st, millions will be out of insurance and the next and first serious crisis will occur as some start dying because of that law.

Cathleen Sibelius has asked the companies to permit late payments, permit use of doctors which are no longer under contract with the companies, and accept people who simply claim to have insurance.  We’ll see how that works out.

The continuing dance with the Iranians.

The White House added to the list of companies and people on its Iranian Black list, and the Iranians declared that they were abandoning the talks and left for Iran.  They also reacted angrily about prospective sanctioned being considered by the House. The State Department announced that the Iranian’s move was just a short pause to determine the next steps.  The Kabuki dance continues.

The Cold spell

A very cold period has gripped the US and Europe over the past few weeks.  6 inches of snow in Jerusalem is unheard of in recent history.  But we seem to create funny cartoons showing disasters caused by global warming only when Hurricanes, Tsunamis, and other warm weather events happen. 

The death of Mandela

Mandela was a great man whose heart could forgive the people who sent him to jail for 27 years, and even made it possible to work with them to create a peaceful transition to democratic rule.  I hope South Africa has the lack of more leaders like him in the future. They certainly lack them in the present

The last week

There are two stories which captured my attention during the past week:

1. The continuing saga of Obama care
2.      The continuing dance about making a deal with the Iranians.

 Obama Care

Reid’s use of the Atomic option (removing the ability to filibuster from all presidential appointments other than to the Supreme Court) shows one of the main differences between Republicans and Democrats.

The first threat to use this option was in 1841 by Senator Henry Clay.  In 1990 Senator Ted Kennedy tried to eliminate it, and in 2005, the Republican senators threatened the same.  In each of these cases, it was abandoned because bipartisanship was the basis for Senate work. If the majority party (50+the VP or 51) could not even get 9 or 10 of the minority party on an action, then the action was not taken.  Actions need to be palatable to both sides.

Reid’s removal of that safety will make Obama’s job of dictating the future of Obama Care easier.  He will be able to appoint judges to all levels of Federal courts except the Supreme Court.  He will be able to appoint anyone to any position requiring Senate Confirmation with a minimum of fuss.

In particular, the panel that will control Obama Care costs can now be appointed without any interference of the Republicans in the Senate.  This is probably one of the main reasons to use the Atomic Option, to eliminate arguments on specific appointees by just rolling over the opposition.

Of course, no party rules the roost forever, and what goes around, comes around.

Iranian Negotiations

The past 2 weeks saw the West engaged in another round of bazar negotiations with the Iranians.  They seem bent to achieve “Peace in our Time” while driving the world closer and closer to a Nuclear Holocaust.

Some Israel supporters talk about bunker buster bombs they got from the US, as if these would be able to penetrate deep under mountain bunkers created by the Iranians.  Such bombs exist in the range of 30,000 lbs., but what kind of airplane could carry them?

The US has the B2 a bomber built for carrying such enormous bombs. As far as I know, the Israelis lack such bombers. The F15 has a max takeoff weight of 68,000 lbs. given its own weight and that of the fuel necessary to take it to Iran, it seems unreasonable as a platform.  Cruise missiles from submarines are similarly not usable.  It leaves only the option of tactical nukes as a means of eliminating the full nuclear capability threat of Iran.

I hope my analysis is wrong, but given the Wests relentless drive for some face saving accord, a nuclear confrontation is brewing, and no one can know its ultimate results.