Death Be not Proud

Dear readers, my family has suffered a great loss in the death last night of our Mother. She was 92 and gravely ill and while we grieve profoundly, we take great comfort in knowing that she has found the eternal peace of God. Below is my favorite poem about the triumph of eternal faith over death. I will begin posts again on Tuesday. In the meantime, you can browse the archives. And whatever your faith, a prayer or thought for her would be deeply appreciated. Bless you all, Casey-Pops. Death, be not proud By John Donne. --- Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; / For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow / Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me / From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, / Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, / And soonest our best men with thee do go, / Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. / Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, / And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, / And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well / And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? / One short sleep past, we wake eternally / And death shall be no more; / Death, thou shalt die.

Chris Christie Victory Irritates Potential GOP 2016 Presidential Rivals

Brace yourselves, America, because the next three years are going to feel a lot like what we got on Wednesday after Republican Chris Christie won the New Jersey governor's election. The barely disguised body punches echoed from Senator Rand Paul's seat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee all the way to Fox News' Sean Hannity. The infighting among GOP presidential hopefuls and their supporters and detractors has just begun. Newsmax reported that Hannity called the "anointment" of Chris Christie as the 2016 GOP presidential nominee "jumping the gun" : "I don't know what the big appeal of Christie is, just based on the record." He said on his radio show on Wednesday : "It is hardly an economic boon or turnaround in the state of New Jersey, I can tell you that. [But] everybody is just going nuts thinking they have this thing figured out for 2016." Hannity charged Christie with not being "in the mainstream of conservatism." Citing exit polls on Tuesday that showed Hillary Clinton beating Christie in 2016, Hannity said : "Chris Christie on his most popular day can't beat Hillary Clinton. That ought to be a warning sign to everybody who wants to put their anointment on this guy without even having a primary....This governor has no idea what's going to hit him. All these liberal media people that want you to run, they are going to be your worst enemy when you get out there on the national campaign trail....And lecturing every conservative, as you are doing, is not going to endear them to you." Hannity taunted Christie : "Has Chris Christie ever said Obama's a liar? Hey Chris, election's over. I dare you. I dare you....I want to hear you say, 'Yeah, Barack Obama is a lair and he lied about his lies.'" ~~~~~ Unlike Hannity, who's not a presidential wannabe, thank goodness, Senator Rand Paul is - and his first barbs aimed at Christie came late on election night when he was interviewed on CNN. But, Rand Paul saved the bulk of his ammunition for a hearing on Superstorm Sandy relief before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday. Paul took Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan to task for the use of federal relief funds on TV advertising aimed at bringing tourists back to areas that were devastated by the superstorm. But he also beat up on Chris Christie, a fellow Republican, for appearing in those ads. "Some of these ads, people running for office put their mug all over these ads while they're in the middle of a political campaign. In New Jersey, $25 million was spent on ads that included somebody running for political office. Do ya' think there might be a conflict of interest of there?" Paul asked. "You know, that's a real problem. And that's why when people who are trying to do good and trying to use taxpayers' money wisely, they're offended to see our money spent on political ads. You know, that's just offensive....It gives the whole thing a black eye." Paul had the decency to acknowledge that New Jersey wasn't the only state to use federal dollars for their "Stronger than the Storm" campaign, citing the New York "Come See the Comeback" ad campaign, (which Paul opposed), but he suggested the New York ads were less offensive because of a NY law that prevents politicians from appearing in the ads. Are we to believe that Senator Rand Paul, caught in a media frenzy over charges of plagiarism in several of his articles and speeches, and who has now blamed his staff for not properly vetting and footnoting them, truly believes he is still a contender for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination? In today's rough-and-tumble US presidential politics, one strike and you're out. That may deprive us of potentially excellent presidents (Rick Perry in 2012 comes to mind), but that's the way it is. So, Senator Paul, I wouldn't start writing any acceptance speeches because I think the 2016 presidential candidates train just left the station without you. ~~~~~ Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, actually had something good to say about the Chris Christie victory. But, Hatch is 79 and serving his last term as Senator, so he can play the elder statesman and sound like the old-fashioned Republicans of yore who actually wanted to win elections instead of trading insults while Democrats pile up the votes. To wit, Senator Hatch thinks he already has a winning GOP 2016 presidential ticket – and it’s got Chris Christie at the top. The Utah Republican praised Christie : “I think that the man really is an exceptionally tough, smart, good conservative who literally appeals across the board, which is what the Republicans need to have,” Hatch said, referring to Christie. “And let’s face it, New Mexico GOP Governor Susana Martinez has a lot of qualities that would help a lot of people to understand that the Republican Party is a broad base party.” ~~~~~ And dear readers, which Republican have we not heard from? Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. Who, as far as I can find, has not even made a congratulatory morning TV stop to show that he knows who Chris Christie is and that Christie has just chalked up an historic win in terms of both winning percentage and Latino and Black votes garnered. I guess nobody told Priebus Tuesday was an election day, so he stayed home and watched "I Love Lucy" reruns in hopes of 'connecting' with Latino voters. -- Will somebody get rid of good ole Rancid Pancreas before he kills off what's left of the Grand Old Party.

HHS Secretary Sebelius Admits to More Obamacare Nightmares

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius testified before the Senate Finance Comnittee on Wednesday, saying that the government needed to fix hundreds of problems with the Obamacare website for the federal health insurance marketplace, but she categorically rejected bipartisan calls from both Democrat and Republican committee members to delay parts of the new health care law. Just hours before Sebelius testified, the White House disclosed that the chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would retire. His office supervised the creation of the catastrophic website. The official, Tony Trenkle, will step down on November 15 “to take a position in the private sector,” according to an email circulated among agency employees. Trenkle job was to supervise the development of IT products and services, including the development of the website. Mr. Trenkle declined to discuss his plans with rhe New York Times, saying : “I can’t speak with you." Trenkle's retirement is part of a management shake-up announced by Michelle Snyder, the chief operating officer of the Medicare agency, who was herself deeply involved in major decisions about the website and insurance marketplace. The Trenkle firing is one more Obama move to push blame as far down his administration ladder as possible, all the while protecting himself and his senior cabinet members. In addition, while Secretary Sebelius was being roundly criticized by the Senators for the failure of the website, yet more website failures were being reported by officials of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid : “The site is performing slowly,” said Julie Bataille, a spokesperson for the Centers. “Some users have difficulty logging in and receive error messages.” Bataille said it was hard to pinpoint the cause because different consumers had experienced different problems. Some people who have created password-protected accounts have said that they cannot get into their accounts to shop for the insurance that will be required for most Americans by the end of 2014. Sebelius said officials had a list of “a couple of hundred functional fixes” that need to be made so the website could work smoothly for most users by November 30, a deadline set by the administration. “We’re not where we need to be,” Sebelius said. “It’s a pretty aggressive schedule to get to the entire punch list by the end of November.” With many people unable to obtain coverage on the defective website, lawmakers in both parties have suggested extending the open enrollment period or delaying the financial penalties for people who will be unable to buy insurance. But Sebelius refused to consider delaying the program. The chief architect of the health care law, Senator Max Baucus, the Wyoming Democrat who is retiring this year, urged Secretary Sebelius to speed up repairs to the website. At a hearing in April, Baucus told Sebelius that he foresaw “a huge train wreck” because the administration had done little to educate consumers or employers. He asked for periodic updates, and he said Wednesday that the reports were "totally unsatisfactory." Senator Baucus also asked if it would be feasible to shut down the website and make all the required repairs at once. “Why just keep limping along?” he asked. Sebelius said it was better to make the repairs “on an ongoing basis” while the system was running, or in the middle of the night, when it was scheduled to be down for repairs. In addition, when asked what the first issuance of enrollment data will show, Sebelius said the first official enrollment numbers are “likely to be quite low, given the struggles that people have had getting access to the site and getting information.” And several other serious problems with Obamacare enrollment were revealed Wednesday. It was confirmed that in late September, Snyder and Trenkle signed an internal memo acknowledging that security controls for the federal website had not been fully tested. They signed off on a six-month plan to reduce the risk that personal information might be inappropriately disclosed. And documents released Wednesday night by House investigators suggest that Obama administration officials knew even before the marketplaces opened for business on October 1 that the computer systems would not be able to handle anywhere near the anticipated demand. The “testing bulletin” suggested the website as of September 30 could handle only about 1,100 users at a time, even though officials had said it should have been able to accommodate perhaps as many as 60,000, according to the documents, released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And as if all these new damaging revelations weren't enough, Sebelius admitted Wednesday to the Senate Finance Committee that it was possible convicted felons could be hired as Obamacare ‘navigators,’ giving them access to personal information like Social Security numbers and addresses of anyone signing up for the program. Sebelius made the admission in an exchange with GOP Senator John Cornyn during the committee hearing. This is yet another breach in Obamacare user security because it is possible that convicted felons would have access to enough user information to easily steal the identity of users they are helping to enroll. ~~~~~ But, dear readers, Secretary Sebelius will not have to worry about any of these failures in the Obamacare website she is responsible for. Because, on October 23 Sebelius told CNS News that she will not enroll on Obamacare because she already has insurance. This is just one more example of Congress and the White House foisting onto defenseless Americans programs, reporting requirements, taxes - and health care laws - that they routinely exempt themselves from having to obey. It is easy to see why GOP Senator Rand Paul wants Congress to pass a law that would make it illegal for Congress to exempt its members from any law it enacts.

Do the Libertarians and Tea Party Really Want Another Democrat Congress and President?

The 2013 US elections are over. These off-year elections are local in nature - mayors, town councils, local initiatives. The New Jersey and Virginia governor elections are the only statewide elections in the year after a presidential election. New Jersey's incumbent GOP governor, Chris Christie, seeking re-election, gave importance to an otherwise routine election day. Republican Christie won last night, in a state overwhelmingly Democrat, thus boosting his claim to be the front runner for the GOP 2016 presidential nomination. He took the majority of women's votes and did very well with Black and Hispanic voters. In short, his four-year record of good government, in which bipartisan compromise and negotiation with the Democrat-controlled state legislature, was rewarded with re-election. In Virginia, with no incumbent in the governor's race, two flawed candidates - the Democrat McAuliffe who was tarred with special-interest business deals and Obamacare faced the Republican Cuccinelli who was painted as a tea party "government shutdown" conservative out of touch with modern America. McAuliffe narrowly won. Mostly because women voted for him, rejecting Cuccinelli's tea party anti-abortion stance. That might not have been enough to defeat Cuccinelli outright because his anti-Obamacare campaign narrowed the gap from a 10-percent advanrage for McAuliffe to a very narrow 1-percent victory. But the well-financed and Clinton-supported McAuliffe campaign had the great luck of having a third-party Libertarian candidate syphon away 7% of the vote that normally would have gone to Cuccinelli. That sealed the deal and put Virginia solidly in the Democrat column with governor, lieutenant governor and two US Senators for the first time in a quarter century. The GOP, by financially ignoring Cuccinelli, whom they considered unelectable, turned their back on a GOP victory that would have been theirs with appropriate money and support. Proving once more Ben Franklin's warning : "We must all hang together or we will surely all hang separately." ~~~~~ Dear readers, these two governorship elections will be analyzed all the way to the 2014 congressional elections and beyond to the 2016 presidential election. Democrats will once again announce the death of the GOP. Nothing could be less true. The Democrats were very lucky to win in Virginia. The GOP lost because of a national leadership lack of faith in their own candidate - and because of a Libertarian candidate who was given votes by Americans who would rather be philosophical pure than elect officials who agree with their overall philosophy of personal liberty and constitutional government. Because of this, the Virginia Libertarians elected a Democrat whose party has constantly trampled on personal liberties and shredded the Constitution. Republicans and Libertarians must negotiate a deal that lets them work together in 2014 and 2016 if the GOP and constitutional government is to succeed. And tea party Republicans must understand that the "one-size-fits-all" Democrat view that sucks all power to Washington and created Obamacare is exactly what they themselves always propose by insisting that every state level Republican in all 50 states must agree with their entire social platform. One size does not fit all and if the tea party does not learn this lesson, they will be responsible for the election of a Democratic Congress in 2014 and a Democrat President in 2016. Leading to more Washington interference in the daily lives of Americans because of the Democrat view that the state knows best and citizens are cows to be milked for the taxes needed to pay for their leftist-socialist worldview. Is this really what the tea party and Libertarians want?