Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Obamacare

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Time to euthanize it:

Obama-care lays waste to half of this “double security” by funneling almost unimaginable levels of power and money to Washington. What’s more, in its startling delegation of de facto lawmaking power to the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other unelected figures in the executive branch, it also severely undermines the separation of powers among the branches. For example, Obama-care is making it illegal for anyone in America (with the narrow exception of houses of worship) to freely sell or buy an insurance plan that fails to offer free birth control and sterilization. But this ban is nowhere to be found in the 2,700 pages of the law itself. Rather, it came as a decree from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, exercising her newfound power. If Obama-care isn’t repealed, examples of such rule by fiat will proliferate.

This brings us back to Romney, the only man who stands in the way of Obama-care’s taking root from coast to coast. Over the next five weeks, Romney would do well to repeat at every turn what he said in Ohio. He should seize this golden opportunity to paint for voters the picture of their future under Obama-care. This has to be a key point in next week’s debate.

Yes. He has to make it a big-government, separation of powers, federalism issue, because that’s the only way he can defend his actions in Massachusetts.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Just Like Every Other Parole Violator

21 Comments

He’s going to be held in solitary:

“He’s going to be confined in a special unit where he’d be in a solitary cell, locked up alone and in maddening isolation,” said attorney Mark Werksman, who is not representing Nakoula but has represented other inmates held at the same jail.

A spokeswoman for the Marshals Service, which is responsible for Nakoula, said the agency’s policy is to not discuss inmate security measures.

Larry Jay Levine, a former federal convict once held at Metropolitan and founder and director of Wall Street Prison Consultants, said Nakoula was likely held in an area called the special housing unit and that he would be kept safe there.

“It’s basically a ‘ground hog day’ kind of existence, because he’s not getting out of his cell,” Levine said.

But this has nothing to do with making a movie. Nothing to see here, folks.

History, Social Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

China’s Aircraft Carrier

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They’re about to find out just how hard it is to run one. It has this amazing statistic that I’d never seen before:

Between 1949, when the U.S. Navy began deploying jets on a large scale, and 1988, when the combined Navy/Marine Corps aircraft accident rate achieved U.S. Air Force levels, the Navy and Marine Corps lost almost 12,000 aircraft and more than 8,500 aircrew.

Emphasis mine. That’s accidents, not combat. And what they mean by getting the rate to Air Force levels, is reducing it to that rate. In other words, those are the casualties of learning how to fly combat-proficient aircraft from carriers, and it didn’t really occur until the introduction of the F/A-18 Hornet.

Here’s a related link: the U.S. Navy’s transition to jets.

And yet we obsess about safety in spaceflight.

[Via email from Jim Bennett]

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!