BellGab.com Archive

A few days ago the presidents of 3 labor unions sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  They were the Democratic Speaker of the House and Senate Majority leader when Congress passed the ObamaCare bill and sent it to the White House for the President's signature.

The letter was addressed to them because not one R in the Senate or the House voted for the bill.  Every D Senator and all but 34 D's in the House voted for it.  They needed all D votes in the Senate to avoid a filibuster.  Some Ds in the House were allowed by the leadership to vote no because there were enough votes to pass it and these members had tough re-election campaigns coming up.

In the letter, signed by the 3 union presidents including Jimmy Hoffa Jr of the Teamsters, some of their issues were: 

-Destruction of the 40 hour work week - people are having their hours reduced so they can be considered 'part-time' and denied employer coverage

-Destruction of the health and well being of the members due to loss of healthcare coverage

- Members campaigned and voted for the Ds because of the Ds 'vision that all Americans will have access to quality affordable healthcare', which it turns out is not going to be the case under this law

- They pledged that if people liked their health care plans, they could keep them - which is not going to be the case

- The way the new law is being interpreted, the non-profit plans the unions have will be destroyed - despite them expressing their concerns to the administration and the pertinent agencies

http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/07/12/union-letter-obamacare-will-destroy-the-very-health-and-wellbeing-of-workers/


I would add that Obama and the Ds cynically included provisions that the worst of it wasn't scheduled to be implemented until after the 2012 elections.

And that employees are being fired in order for businesses to either get under 50 employees so the bill won't apply to them.  Other businesses are firing - or not hiring - employees due to uncertainty and cost of insurance.  Other businesses are dropping coverage for employees and planning to pay the 'tax' instead, others are dropping spouses and dependents.

Insurance companies are leaving certain states where profitability was low and red tape was high to begin with.  Others are jacking rates sky high to pay for all the additional coverage they are being forced to provide (dependents up to age 26, birth control, pre-existing issues, etc).

Doctors are retiring and students are choosing to go into something other than medicine.  There ARE going to be panels that will ration health care - will determine who gets what treatment, or any treatment at all.  Which will cause the premature death of some patients.  And extended misery of others.  It is very doubtful that a net increase of Americans will be covered.  People that suggested at the time that there would be 'death panels' were sneered at.



This is by no means a complete list of the absolute failure of ObamaCare.  It's nice that the people affected by this legislation are now waking up, but one thing I'd like to say is - we told you so.  All of this and more was predictable and predicted.  The bill was crammed down the throats of Americans even though opposition to it was around 70% at the time.

This coup to oust the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is incredibly good fortune for the Egyptians, their neighbors, and the rest of the world.  Despite US interference on behalf of now former President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization, with much blood and many attacks on their hands.  The leaders of al Qaeda belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Half of all Arabs live in Egypt,  It has a good sized army.  They have been a long time friend of the US and stabilizing force in the region.  Their neighbors include Libya to the west, Sudan to the south, Hamas (in Gaza), Israel, & Jordan to the northeast, and the Saudi's across the Red sea to the East.  They co-exist with Israel.  They own and control the Suez canal.  Because of their size, location, stability, and military strength, they are a strong voice in the region.

The militaries in many parts of the world - including Egypt - see themselves as the protectors of the state.  When things get out of hand politically, they see it as their duty to remove the government, take charge, reestablish order, then at some point hand the government back to civilians.  We see this from time to time in places like Thailand, Pakistan, former colonies of Spain like The Philippines and much of Latin America.  It's a different mindset from other places that have military coups - in those places the military has no intention of handing power back to anyone. 

Iran was lost to the terrorists permanently after the Shah fell, and they have been extremely destructive.  We are very fortunate to have Egypt back in the fold of civilized nations.  Had the Muslim Brotherhood fully consolidated power as leaders of Egypt, they would have been extremely dangerous.


 

The Girls On Fox News Song

There must be tons of topics George never talks about anymore.  Little catch words and phrases that have fallen into disuse.  Stories he used to tell that he's forgotten about, or that he didn't follow up on.  Here are a few that come to mind.

Does George still have guests and callers that talk about 'rods' - flying creatures that could only be caught on camera (or something like that)?  I think that was started off by a guest named Jose Escamilla, but it seemed like George used to talk about them all the time.

Shadow rodents too.

Does he still claim to see 11s and clocks showing 11:11 all over thuh place?

The EU is demanding the Cyprus government to partially fund a bailout by looting bank accounts in Cyprus.  After the predictable bank run by depositors, they've declared a bank 'holiday' and closed the banks to give Parliment a chance to pass the 'tax' bill.

In completely unrelated developments, the Euro is tanking, as are stock markets.

Meanwhile, here in the US a staggering National Debt crisis carries on, nearly undiscussed let alone addressed.  Those untaxed IRAs and 401(k)s are just sitting out there like fat targets.

Me?  I'm still waiting for my Obama phone

Is anyone else watching this?  It's a new show on H2 for the 2012-12 season.  Tonight they just had thir 11th episode.

Ian once had Scott Wolter on discussing the Kensingon Runestone, and his book about it called the Hooked X.  He was interesting and fairly persuasive establishing the Runestone as real and not a hoax - the 'hooked X' rune on the stone was an unknown rune symbol to any would be hoaxer 100 years ago when the stone was found in a Minnesota farmers field, and only recently has that particular rune been 'found' and determined to have been in use on one small island in the Baltic (the Island of Gotland) - thus showing the runstone to be a true artifact and not a hoax.

After that Scott Wolter became a known geologist-archaeologist looking into other possible evidence in stone carvings and stone works that Europeans and other explorers had come to the Americas before Columbus and the Vikings.  The show was so promising. 

But it's just been so boring and terrible.  He never quite seems to get to the bottom of anything (sort of like Linda Moultin Howe).  He has a need to throw in personal theories that have no support.  The jist of these hour-long shows could be edited down to about 8 minutes and not lose much.  There are obvious questions he doesn't explore, and dumb things he spends a lot of time on.  He leaves evidence and explanations out.  There is lower hanging fruit than some of the topics he has chosen to look into.  When he's doing a show on one thing, it often jumps to something else and leaves the original idea hanging.

At least someone is looking into this stuff.  I guess.

After the riots finally end in the less civilized portions of some of our cities (the inner city), and the thuggy pressure groups like Occupy have their fill of burning, looting, and issuing threats, the Phoney Media will suddenly:

- begin noticing the homeless again

- be pointing out why the debt and deficit are bad things again

- make unemployment seem worse than it is instead of beter than it is

- report that the housing sector is doing worse than it is instead of better than it is

- start reporting the setbacks and lost ground we are encountering in Iraq and Afganistan

- be fear-mongering about terrorism again

- be holding the President accountable for poor policy again (same with the Congress if the R's end up with both Houses)

- sound concerned about small businesses again

- find and report sob stories about folks that are falling through the health care cracks again

- rediscover foreign policy issues that need to be addressed


Heck, enough Leftists and Democrats in general will be mad at Obama for losing that we may even find out more about his background, cronies, and even who he really is.

In order.

The Texas 'Football' Longhorns,as Howard would have said.  Which means I like Oklahoma, Oklahoha St, A&M, Tech, Baylor, SMU, TCU, and anyone else they play that might beat them

Dallas Cowboys.  Duh.
-
Oakalnd Raiders.  I wish for them to go 8-8 every year, just missing the playoffs, not getting a good draft position.  Now if they stopped with the dumb penaltlies, stupid talk, got rid of the criminals and former USC QBs, started winning and moved the fan base beyond the thugs and costumed idiots of the world, we could talk..

LA Lakers and Dodgers, USC Trojans

Yankees

The football factories of Ohio St, Michigan, Nebraska, Florida, Notre Dame,

Oregon Ducks.  Certainly their fans.

Seattle Seahawks, at least for  as long as they have Pete Carroll as coach

Colts, for the way they left Ba'mo'.  Like Luck though, maybe enough to take them off the list

St Louis Rams.  They were in LA entirely too long

Knicks, Magic, Heat

LA Kings, Dallas Stars

UConn, Duke and North Carolina

Most of the rest of the teams in LA, Texas, Florida, NY

Not sure where to rank it but any team from University of Detroit-Mercy.  For obvious reasons.


Favorite team:  whoever is playing the Raiders next.


Ok, that should be enough to piss off just about everyone...

How many days has it been since Hurricane Issac and most of New Orleans is still without power?  To the media somehow it's just a local issue, a non-issue really.  Imagine if an R was president - we'd all be reliving Katriana, it wold be leading off the news, on the front page of newspapers, magazines - another FEMA failure under an uncaring Repub Pres.

Remember the Bush bashing with Katrina.  Never mind that FEMA is a last responder, there to backup state and local agencies and supplt what they ask for.  No, under the R's, when an incompetent D mayor and D govenor fail, when they were told to get ready and didn't, somehow it bacame Bushes fault. 

I'm thinking if an R was president today this would be covered much much differently.  There's your media bias.