Killing Obamacare

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Photo Credit: GARY LOCKEThe recent government shutdown illustrated a lot of political truths. For starters, people are unhappy when the government is shut down, and they naturally tend to blame the party of less government. The media instinctively help them conclude that the Republicans are at fault.

But the shutdown also illustrated just how unprepared the Republican party is to deal with the threat of Obamacare. Even though the law is unpopular, Republicans failed to convince the country of how great a threat it poses to the public good. Poll after poll shows that only a minority thinks the law will make them worse off, despite growing evidence that Obamacare’s side effects are serious and far-reaching. “Shutdown theater” did nothing to alter that attitude, which reflects poorly on the Tea Party backbenchers who wanted this fight and the leaders who prosecuted it. And now it appears House Republicans intend to deemphasize Obamacare and focus again on cutting traditional spending.

This is a mistake. The fight against Obamacare cannot be pushed to the sidelines. If the shutdown failed to notch any victory against it, then conservative leaders need to rethink their tactics and try something different. The easiest path to victory against the law, at first glance, is to win total control of the government in the 2016 elections. But a closer look at the law, especially in historical context, indicates grave risks associated with that approach: Obamacare may do much damage by that point, and it may be substantially more difficult to undo four years down the road.

Obamacare is, of course, a liberal law, as all agree. But its place within liberalism is a peculiar one, and worth investigating in some detail. When we think about the modern American left, we often think of the provision of benefits, suggested by Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. It is that third freedom that American liberals have focused on for generations, giving us Social Security, Medicare, aid to education, and so on. Four Freedoms liberalism has been decidedly rights-based.

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Are Smartphones Turning Us Into Bad Samaritans? (+video)

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In late September, on a crowded commuter train in San Francisco, a man shot and killed 20-year-old student Justin Valdez. As security footage shows, before the gunman fired, he waved around his .45 caliber pistol and at one point even pointed it across the aisle. Yet no one on the crowded train noticed because they were so focused on their smartphones and tablets. “These weren’t concealed movements—the gun is very clear,” District Attorney George Gascon later told the Associated Press. “These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They’re just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They’re completely oblivious of their surroundings.”

Another recent attack, on a blind man walking down the street in broad daylight in Philadelphia, garnered attention because security footage later revealed that many passersby ignored the assault and never called 911. Commenting to a local radio station, Philadelphia’s chief of police Charles Ramsay said that this lack of response was becoming “more and more common” and noted that people are more likely to use their cellphones to record assaults than to call the police.

Indeed, YouTube features hundreds of such videos—outbreaks of violence on sidewalks, in shopping malls and at restaurants. Many of these brawls, such as the one that broke out between two women during a victory parade for the New York Giants in 2012, feature crowds of people gathered around, cameras aloft and filming the spectacle.

Our use of technology has fundamentally changed not just our awareness in public spaces but our sense of duty to others. Engaged with the glowing screens in front of us rather than with the people around us, we often honestly don’t notice what is going on. Adding to the problem is the ease with which we can record and send images, which encourages those of us who are paying attention to document emergencies rather than deal with them. The fascination with capturing images of violence is nothing new, as anyone who has perused Weegee’s photographs of bloody crime scenes from the early 20th century can attest. But the ubiquity of camera-enabled cellphones has shifted the boundaries of acceptable behavior in these situations. We are all Weegee now.

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America’s Oil Surge Leaving Alaska in the Dust; U.S. Producing More Crude Than Imports

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Photo Credit: Fox News America’s oil boom has the Texas tea flowing, whole new towns being built in North Dakota and, for the first time in decades, the U.S. producing more crude than it imports. But Alaska, a state known for its vast oil resources and pro-drilling politics, is being left in the dust of this new oil surge.

The state, with its 800-mile pipeline running from the North Slope to Valdez, has fallen to fourth among oil-producing states, now trailing Texas, North Dakota and California. It’s not sitting well with many there.

“There’s definitely a hit to the state pride,” said Alaska Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Joe Balash. “There’s a certain amount of embarrassment that a place as over-regulated and over-taxed as California is eclipsing Alaska.”

Production in Alaska peaked in 1988 when companies sent 2.1 million barrels of oil per day down the pipeline. Declining ever since, last year production hit a low of 526,000 barrels per day.

Everyone agrees that part of the decline is due to the natural cycle of oil field drilling. Prudhoe Bay, on Alaska’s North Slope, is still the largest oil field ever discovered in the U.S. But nearly 40 years of drilling has diminished the supply of easy-to-get oil.

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Reagan’s Daughter: Why Am I Losing My Health Insurance?

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Photo Credit: New England SecessionFormer President Ronald Reagan’s liberal activist daughter Patti Davis is asking just what many other people across the United States want to know — why she’s losing her insurance.

“Could the president please explain why I and others are losing our health ins. plans? Wasn’t supposed to happen!” Davis posted on Twitter Friday afternoon.

Davis, of course, isn’t the first to want to know what’s happening to her insurance in the wake of Obamacare. Others have been dropped as large employers such as IBM and others opt to have their employees get their coverage through state marketplaces rather than to keep up their coverage.

Davis also has been speaking about her disappointment with Obama in recent weeks, particularly when it comes to the government shutdown.

“We all remember your campaign tag of “no drama Obama,” she wrote in an open letter to the president on her website on Oct. 13. “Interesting that there has been one drama after another in your presidency, this last one really tipping the scales.”

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A Black Box in Your Car? Some See a Source of Tax Revenue

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Photo Credit: Mark Boster/LA Times As America’s road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America’s major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.

The tea party is aghast. The American Civil Liberties Union is deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.

And while Congress can’t agree on whether to proceed, several states are not waiting. They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over. Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.

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House Intelligence Panel Chair — Europe Probably Spying on Obama Too

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Photo Credit: APThe top lawmaker on the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday defended the secret data collection tactics of the United States, including the phone tapping of foreign allies, suggesting Europeans are probably doing the same type of monitoring of President Obama.

“They don’t have necessarily the same type of oversight of their intelligence services that we do and their compartmentalization is much smaller than ours,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Rogers pointed out that Obama’s BlackBerry is encrypted, suggesting it’s a defense against other countries that may be trying to monitoring his communications.

“I think they need to have a better oversight structure in Europe,” Rogers said. “I think they would be enlightened to find out what their intelligence services may or may not be doing in the interests of their own national security.”

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Report: First Western Eyewitness in Benghazi to Go Public Gives Account of Attack, Warning Signs

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Photo Credit: Fox News The first Western eyewitness to the deadly Benghazi terror attacks has given an account of the seven-hour assault on the U.S. outpost in Libya and says Americans knew such an incident was inevitable.

The witness — a former British soldier who for decades helped protect U.S. diplomats and military leaders — told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that Al Qaeda forces first attacked the U.S. Special Mission Compound in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. Then they launched a second attack on a secret CIA annex about a mile across the city.

“They knew what they were doing,” the security guard told CBS. “That was a well-executed attack.”

The guard said he was in his apartment about 15 minutes away from the attacks when he learned of them through a frantic phone call from a Libyan guard.

“I could hear gunshots,” said the guard, “And he said, ‘There are men coming into the mission’ … You could tell he was really scared and he was running.”

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Rep. Darrell Issa: Kathleen Sebelius Should Be Fired

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Photo Credit: Examiner File/Graeme JenningsAdding his voice to the growing chorus of lawmakers calling for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to step down in the wake of Obamacare’s clunky rollout, Rep. Darrell Issa on Sunday questioned why she continues to stay on.

“The president has been poorly served in the implementation of his own legislation,” Issa, R-Calif., said in an interview on CBS. “If somebody doesn’t leave … then he’s missing the point of Management 101, which is these people are there to serve him well, and they haven’t.”

Issa called on Sebelius to step down voluntarily.

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Neighbor Gunned Down Family of Four and their Dogs Because he was Furious Over Loud Barking

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Photo Credit: KNXV-TV An Arizona man has murdered his four neighbors and killed their two dogs because the canines wouldn’t stop barking loudly, police have revealed.

Michael Dante Guzzo, 56, became enraged over the noise from the pets at a neighboring townhouse in a Phoenix apartment complex on Saturday, detectives say.

They believe he used a pump-action shotgun to shoot dead Bruce Moore, 66; his daughter, Renee Moore, 36; her husband Michael Moore, 42; and their son, Shannon Moore, 17. He also slaughtered their dogs.

Guzzo then fired several rounds into the door of another neighbor.

He returned home and killed himself.

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Woman Buys Thief Groceries After He Steals Her Wallet

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Photo Credit: Fox News An Oklahoma woman is being credited for a novel approach to retrieving her stolen wallet.

Jessica Eaves told Yahoo! Shine she was at her local grocery when, “I saw this gentleman down the aisle from me. He walked behind me, and when I got a couple of aisles over, I realized my wallet was gone.”

Rather than summon police, the Guthrie mother-of-four reportedly says she, “spotted him in a crowded aisle and approached . . . I said to him, ‘I think you have something of mine. I’m gonna give you a choice:

“You can either give me my wallet and I’ll forgive you right now, and I’ll even take you to the front and pay for your groceries.”

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