George Rebane
Actually, that should have been ‘… our out-of-depth Community Organizer’; but where to begin?
The ongoing and growing scandals – Asleep or fiddling while Benghazi burns, Holder going after Fox News reporter, IRS going after conservative orgs, DOJ tapping into AP, … – are piling up faster than the administration spin doctors can provide material for the late evening comedy shows. Now we have a real genuine ‘Oh shit!’ embarrassment coming in the back door of the White House on Obamacare.
The unions are going public with their opposition to the President’s premier showcase legislation that has been celebrated by liberals from Nevada County to Cape Cod. About 20M union members are about to take a real hard look at the remaining benefits of their union membership, then prepare to head for the exits. Union leaders are screaming at the Dems in Congress to get them exempted from Obamacare, why? Because they’ve now seen what the rest of us knew way back when, everything Obama told them about the ‘Affordable Care Act’ was a lie, they can’t afford it.
Some union leaders like KM Robinson of the United Union of Roofers are saying flat out that they should rebuild that travesty from ground up, or just get rid of it. And that’s not good for the guy who sweet talked the unions out of gazillions to fund his election campaign – twice! Now I’m not saying that ol’ Barry intended to screw his big base of support. Not at all, he just screwed up big time and delivered a “train wreck” for what will wind up as 18% of America’s economy. Well, he did have a little help from a few other ditzos on the Hill like Princess Pelosi and Hapless Harry.
Obamacare is being received so badly that Kathleen Sebelius, HNIC at the Dept of HHS is out beating the bushes for private funds to pay for some propaganda to get young healthy people to buy health insurance through the federally mandated state insurance exchanges. Lawyers are looking at that little exercise as being the equivalent of Reagan’s Iran/Contra kerfuffle. But what’s the ACA implementing cabinet secretary to do when we now hear that 54% of Americans “disapprove” of the healthcare munificence from their federal government. In spite of all this, the lamestream continues to send their best crickets to cover the story – or stories. (HNIC? that’s Head Nanny in Charge, what’d you think it meant?)
Thanks to Barry’s misreading of Lord Keynes and listening to fellow nobelist Krugman, the country is up to its collective butt in debt while continuing to dig the hole ever deeper. As I have said before, Obamacare will turn out to be the world’s most expensive and despised healthcare system ever. But not to worry, the CO and the peace-loving Dems are going to pay for the whole thing out of our defense budget. The speeches about America’s global retreat are already being delivered on a weekly basis.
But even that doesn’t satisfy the Occupy sector of his base. My favorite pro-communist website truthout.com published a doozy of a screed that laid bare the Left’s real response to all this capitalism and ill-distributed wealth in the land. William Rivers Pitt, their number one mouthpiece and editor, wrote in ‘The Beginning of the End of the Beginning’ a pretty ominous screed that ended with –
Occupy was only the beginning, but may very well have been the last manifestation of peaceful resistance against the ever-widening chasm of inequality and desolation. The noose is tightening around the necks of average people, and more become radicalized with each passing day. The wealthy would do well to take note of this, and voluntarily move to square the savage imbalance that drives billions around the world into furious despair. It does not have to be this way, and if it continues in this way, eventually the dam is going to break. When that happens, woe be unto those who believe their wealth keeps them safe and cozy. On that day, the rock will not hide them, and the dead tree will give no shelter.
Lest you think that this is a message from some remote hinterland of leftwing nuts (or is it left wingnuts, whatever), truthout.com successfully raises tens of thousands monthly to stay in business, and regularly features nationally prominent leftwing contributors like Amy Goodman and Robert Reich. And the lamestream (along with local acolytes) continues to put out Napolitano’s copy that it is the tea partiers and our veterans that Americans need to keep an eye out for (see also RL Crabb’s cartoon).
Moving on to more progressive nonsense. Everyone should have heard by now that our California legislature is queuing up a series of bills to stop the extraction of shale oil and gas from the state’s recently discovered Monterey Shale Formation which contains about two thirds of the country’s entire shale fuel reserves. Why stop it? Well the butt stupid reason given is that it will require fracking to extract the fuels, and who knows what fracking will cause if we allow it in California, probably everything from exploding water faucets to the heartbreak of psoriasis. Not. California has been successfully fracking its shale deposits for decades with not one incident of pollution or psoriasis. The alternative reason, of course, is that California’s economy must be brought to its knees in order to put through the planning and control policies for managing our population, policies that would eerily fly in tight formation with Agenda 21.
One of those policy areas was aired yesterday afternoon in the Board of Supervisors chamber in Nevada County’s Rood Center. The Supes were considering the forest fuels problem as we enter a particularly long and dry fire season. We all know that our forests are overflowing with thick undergrowth and slash that is primed to burn. And starting with the EPA, abetted by legions of eco-nuts, who know how to file ‘sue and settle’ lawsuits, our hands are tied when attempting to implement common sense solutions that will abate the fire danger, create jobs, and turn a profit for private enterprise.
Dr Tom Quinn of the USDA Forest Service and Forest Supervisor of the Tahoe National Forest gave an excellent presentation on the situation to the BoS and interested county residents. I was alarmed to learn that California annually harvests only about one tenth of the board feet of timber that the forests in the state produce. And we do that while importing 75% of our lumber needs from out of state. Federal and state policies have shut down hundreds of lumber mills and destroyed thousands of jobs along with countless communities, leaving behind economic and ecological destitution.
In the meantime power plants in Europe are being mandated to convert from fossil fuels to burning wood pellets resulting in more net carbon being pumped into the atmosphere because of the accounting methods used by their local eco-nuts. This is germane because Europe doesn’t have enough wood to burn for electricity, and therefore will have to import it from – wait for it – South Carolina and other southeastern states.
Meanwhile here in California – we are too far from Europe to economically supply its needs – our eco-nuts and their Sacramento political counterparts are figuring out how to stop the remainder of California’s meager timber harvests. (I also had a chance to talk with Dr Quinn after his presentation ended.) And they’re doing it with great success, making it virtually impossible to supply our own timber needs or adopt new technologies to make economically viable bio-fuels out of trees and undergrowth that ONLY contribute to the fire danger to all of us who live in these forests.
To put a ribbon on the whole thing, today the Forest Service is considering shutting down a huge hunk of the Tahoe National Forest for the sole purpose of protecting some supposedly endangered yellow-clawed, stipe-bellied, cross-eyed, pigeon-toed frog. Isn’t Obamastan wonderful?
[30may13 update] H/T to reader.
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