Let’s talk about the Republican split.

Let’s talk about the Republican split.

I was going to call it a “Civil War” but that would be an exaggeration. There is a very deep fissure in the Republican ranks. There are any number of ways it can be described, but one of the best descriptions I have read of the "establishment" Republican Party is that it's the “Not-Democrat Party.” By that I mean that the Republicans are the party you vote for when you don’t want the Democrats to win.

The Democrats have become firmly ideological. When Michelle Obama spoke about her husband wishing to fundamentally transform America, she meant it and so does he. They, and a majority in Congress, desire a socialist welfare state and are doing everything they can to transform the country into one.

Those who quibble with my use of the term - socialist - are simply playing semantic games suitable for academia.  They are trying to re-define terms.  They do that all the time.  They won't use the phrase "raise your taxes," but will talk instead of "revenue enhancement."  It means exactly the same thing but it sounds better.

You don’t have to nationalize the country’s basic industries, at least not now, when you can tell them what to do via agencies like the ACA, EPA, DOJ, NSA, HEW, SEC, IRS and a host of other agencies including those “friendly” guys in the Smokey the Bear hats at the National Park Service who are ready to follow orders, block views of Mt. Rushmore, imprison elderly tourists at Yellowstone and threaten to arrest old veterans in wheelchairs,  like good Germans.

The establishment Republicans, on the other hand, hope that the Democrats will screw up enough so that they can win some elections, get the better offices, control the committees and get more of the PAC funds to fatten their campaign coffers. But they are the polar opposite of being ideological. Oh, they remember the words and the music enough to give a rousing stump speech about the direction the country’s headed, the debt and the deficit, the need for a strong national defense. But they check their beliefs with pollsters before they utter them and pander to the Democrats in the press. They want to get good press and so, like Groucho Marx, they proclaim:

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.

They come to Washington to compromise.  Not having any firm principles, they see nothing wrong with helping build the Welfare State, but hope to do it on the cheap.  But having arrived in Washington  their compromise is always with the Left, never with the Right.  The Right lives in flyover country while the Left is right outside their door. 

Drew at "Ace of Spades" explains...

For too long the GOP has wooed conservatives by talking tough but acting very moderate when elected. I think you can trace it back to George H.W. Bush breaking his "no new taxes" pledge. Conservatives rallied around the elder Bush and put aside their distrust and dislike of him mostly out of respect for Ronald Reagan only to find out Bush the Elder was exactly who conservatives thought he was all along...an old school country club Republican.

The support for his son, Bush 43, was largely a result of 9/11 and the subsequent - incredibly poorly named -  War on Terror. Outside of that his presidency was as country club as his father, with a Texas drawl. Remember his mantra: “compassionate conservatism?” What was that all about?  Did he believe the Liberal lie that conservatism was not compassionate?  Visit, if you dare, the "urban" neighborhoods of Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Camden or any of the other festering sores that "Liberal compassion" has built and tell me again that Conservatives need to apologize for their positions.

What Liberals have done is created a group of people who are three days away from anarchy and starvation. Richard Fernandez at Belmont club:

Fifty million. Consider that for a moment. Most of those 50 million people live in high-density cities. Many are proud owners of Obama phones, Obama food stamps, Obama unemployment checks and Obama subsidized housing. They have absolutely no clue that the government upon which they wholly depend to put food on the table is teetering on the verge of permanent collapse. (Seriously, they cannot conceive of the idea of government “running out of money” because they do not understand where money comes from.) Because of this distorted belief, they do not prepare for any future events other than more Obama handouts. Their entire “preparedness” plan is to vote for Democrats, because that’s who they know will give them the most handouts. And they will always win the popular vote, too, because any politician promising to restore responsible fiscal spending to the government by cutting programs will be viciously accused of being “mean” or involved in “hating poor people.” So the government handouts will only ratchet higher and higher, ensnaring more and more people, until the entire system is unsustainable and collapses under its own weight.

When that system of dependence fails, those who depend on it will panic in mere hours. As proof of this, consider the fact that this mass looting of Wal-Mart stores happened in less than three hours after the Saturday EBT card glitch struck. Police had to be called in to prevent the situation from getting completely out of control, and it was offline for only part of one day.

Now imagine what will happen when EBT cards go offline for 24, 48 or even 72 hours. And imagine it happening in every U.S. city simultaneously.

Remember those young black kids in Detroit talking about Obama's stash?  Those are the people who, if the EBT cards don't work,  are not going to be looking for a job, but to ransack the Wal Mart until the shelves are bare. Don't believe me?  Read this.

Here's what the Republican establishment needs to hear:

Conservative voters are feeling neglected betrayed and unappreciated by the GOP (and I think for good reason). Instead of telling conservatives to suck it up and fight Democrats, Republicans are going to have to treat conservatives as voters they have to woo. Maybe instead of telling conservatives to shut up and fight Democrats they should spend sometime telling conservatives what the GOP has done for them (and, "but the Democrats really suck" isn't good enough). If the GOP has been so good for conservatives (and I mean small government conservatives here), it shouldn't be hard to come up with a long list of positive achievements. Of course, there will be an alternative and likely longer list of GOP actions against small government conservative interests.

Increasingly the GOP is going to have convince wayward conservatives the GOP is good for them like they try and win over any other voting bloc. You don't see the GOP berating moderates, women, minorities or other blocs that aren't assumed to be part of the base the way they do "tea party" conservatives.

The members of the Tea Party and the rest of the grass root conservatives are accustomed to being treated no better than Democrats treat blacks: they are useful for winning elections but told to get to the back of the bus at other times.  In return blacks are rewarded by a subsistence existence via welfare; Conservatives don't even get that much. 

But the members of the Tea Party are not helpless welfare cases whose monthly check comes from the government.  They are independent and, in fact, contribute to the government rather than feeding from it.  These are free people who will rebel and have the means to do it. 

Back to Fernandez:

William Galston, writing in the Wall Street Journal warns that the institutional Republican Party — the political equivalent of the Washington Generals — may have lost its audience after the longest losing streak in history. A large part of the GOP base is walking out — led by an “aroused, angry and above all fearful [Jacksonian America] in full revolt against a new elite”. They’re no longer entertained, no longer spellbound by suspense after finally being convinced that the Washington General’s secret job is to lose every exhibition match against the Democratic Party Hokum Globetrotters. 

I do not believe that the Republican establishment will listen.  They lack both the spirit and the energy to fight the Democrats; it's easier to join the Democrats and try to destroy the insurgency.  If the establishment wins, as it well could, the Republican Party will return to it's status as an irrelevant minor party.   Keep in  mind that's exactly what it was in Congress for many years until the Gingrich revolution. 

But it's possible for the Tea Party to win.  They view the last few weeks as a loss for the Republican establishment but a trumpet call for the Tea Party. 

The Washington Times:

Far from chastened by the debt debate, tea partyers and conservative groups signaled Thursday they’ve concluded they didn’t lose, but rather were sabotaged from within by weak Republicans — and they took the first steps to oust one of them.

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel announced he would challenge U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in the Republican primary next year, a day after the GOP’s senior senator voted to end the 16-day government shutdown and grant President Obama more borrowing authority.

Mr. McDaniel immediately saw a flood of support from the outside groups that had rallied against this week’s debt and spending agreement.

“Our country can’t afford any more bad votes that stem from old friends and back-room deals,” said Daniel Horowitz, deputy political director of the Madison Project. “And as witnessed from the recent budget battle against Obamacare, we cannot win against Democrats if we don’t grow our conservative bench in the Senate.”

That doesn't sound like they're taking the establishment's advice.  The test will be in the country, not in Washington,  The country is being tested and we will see what kind of people we are. 

One more thought from Fernandez:

But the assumption that Third Party must only come from conservative ranks bears closer examination. For the Democrats need money too. In fact they need it more than anyone else, a fact underscored by their obsession to lift every limit on their credit cards. The truth is they are only one step ahead of disaster; for if once the EBT system stops working, even momentarily, there is a drastic disturbance in the force.

Nor is this surprising. It has been argued and proved by natural disasters that the entire fabric of civilization is but nine meals from anarchy. After 3 days without food most people are willing to do anything to anybody to get a meal. The hard reality is that the current deficit system will inexorably create a situation when the grub literally runs out.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s argued that slavery should be abolished because it was a money loser. “The colonies in which there were no slaves became more populous and richer than those in which slavery flourished”. That fading system was not only bad, but bad for business. Similarly it can be said wide sections of the Democratic Party have an interest in rising against The Plantation in order to survive.

In the same way that Tocqueville maintained that slavery could be condemned “in the name of the master”, so it can be said that the members of Democratic Party should also rise in the ‘name of their pensions, jobs and other expected benefits’. Without reform those ‘gains’ are toast. Lincoln Steffens once said of Soviet Russia, “I have seen the future and it works.” People with pensions should visit Detroit. That is the future and it doesn’t work.

The middle-class Democrats who want their pensions paid, the teachers and the college professors, the city and state employees by the millions need the system to stay solvent at least during their lifetimes.  They are going to find out what it means to compete with people dependent on Obama's stash as cities go bankrupt and decisions have to be made about who gets the money that remains. It's not going to be Republicans vs. Democrats but the working class versus everybody else.  The pitchforks are being shouldered and the torches are being lit, and the people in the castle are in for a surprise.
 

 

“None of You [Reporters] Were Math Majors, Were You?”

Via Powerline

Default hysteria continues in Washington, in defiance of the most basic facts of arithmetic. Some Republicans have even been taken in, but one who is having none of it is Congressman David Schweikert of Arizona, the former treasurer of Maricopa County:

“You and I can find ways the game-playing has been done,” said Arizona Rep. David Schweikert, the former treasurer of Maricopa County. “You don’t get to have those debates and discussions if you have the administration able to game-play with the trust funds.”

Another reporter asked Schweikert to respond to some doom-saying quotes from Chinese bankers. “I lay this at the steps of the administration and Jack Lew,” said the congressman. “The unconscionable, unacceptable use of language, the word ‘default,’ when the borrowing we need for 2014 is we’re 16 percent short on revenue. To use the word ‘default,’ to scare the markets—are politics really that important to this administration that it ignores basic math?”

Schweikert ticked off ways that he, as a county treasurer, had sought balance. “The basic repo desk, running your ladders on your debt—it’s stunning that the politicians in the administration care more about keeping this as a wedge than the international markets. Even Geithner made it clear that he had the ability to prioritize…. [T]here is no such thing as default unless there is an actual evil attempt from the administration. When you have 18 percent of GDP coming in in cash, less than 2 percent going out in debt coverage—I’m stunned you all fall for it in the press. None of you were math majors, were you?”

Forgive me if I have not written about default before, but I can't help but notice that when the Obama administration uses the term "default" it loses its meaning. Default is not paying the interest on your debt. It doesn't mean that you can't go out for your usual Friday night dinner at a fancy restaurant.  But that's how Team Obama defines it.

Why are intellectuals, sometimes the most intelligent among us, so dumb?

Wes Pruden

Why are intellectuals, sometimes the most intelligent among us, so dumb?

This is the question that confounds everyone; some intellectuals most of all. The late William F. Buckley Jr., a certified egghead, once said he would rather be governed by the first 50 names in the Boston telephone book than by the professors at Harvard.

Another wit observes that an intellectual is someone who so prefers theory over experience that he would sit down on a red-hot stove, twice. You can be too smart for your own good, and have the blisters on your bottom to prove it.

The intellectual romance with the clever Barack Obama continues. Having invested so much in candy and flowers, they must ignore all the evidence of being dumped.

His cultivated demeanor and carefully applied patina of synthetic sophistication, fraudulent as it may be, is what attracted the adoration of intellectuals from across the political spectrum in 2008, says Charles Murray, the social scientist and an intellectual with impressive books, studies and learned papers. He admits that he’s a dumpee.

“It’s kind of embarrassing to admit it,” he tells an interviewer for the website Daily Caller, “but I responded in part to his rhetoric because he talks just like me.

“It’s his whole way of presentation of self … of a little self-deprecation in the argument and picking out a nuance here, which is all the ways that we overeducated people have been socialized in the same way. It’s the way we carry on discourse. Along with [seeing] what was a very engaging personality, I kind of ignored things which … a lot of working-class people glommed onto right away.”

 

President Obama's favorite footstool: The famous Resolute desk

Working-class stiffs, the people an earlier generation of political scientists called “Joe Sixpack,” having earned their blisters and calluses by heavy lifting, are too smart to take a seat on the red-hot stove even once.

Having been to some big towns and heard some big talk, they were too smart by miles to be taken in by a smooth-talking butter and egg man from Chicago.

“It’s not that I think he is not a patriot,” says Mr. Murray, “but remember the line, he said, ‘You didn’t build that.’ No American is going to think you can say that, no matter what your political views are, because it’s just disastrous to say that. He is clueless about this country in some profoundly disturbing ways.”

How could he not be clueless about his native land, when he absorbed anti-American venom in his tender and formative years as a child in the Third World? He was deprived of the instincts and cultural intuitions that are the native son’s birthright.

No other American president in anyone’s imagination would instruct the National Park Service to evict veterans of World War II, many arriving in wheelchairs or moving with unsteady gait on walkers and walking canes to see the long-awaited memorial to the celebration and sacrifice of their unselfish generation.

The veterans had run afoul of the instructions to the Park Service rangers to “make life as difficult for people as we can.”

Then, only days later, thousands of illegal aliens were invited to rally for privilege and amnesty on the very soil where the veterans, American citizens all, were forcibly told they were not welcome.

Presidents of all stripes usually think they’re special and should be treated that way. But no president before him has guarded his privacy like President Obama.

He constructed his personal history with a ghost-written autobiography and refused to answer questions. He let speculation about his birthplace fester for months, stretching into years, before producing the evidence that put the questions to rest.

This raised no questions from the intellectual class. Why would he have done that?

Inquiring minds didn’t want to know. Mr. Obama’s obsessive protection of personal privacy, however, does not extend to everyone else.

The government eavesdropping on telephone calls, the collection of Internet correspondence, the probing into everyone’s underwear at the airport is OK.

The private man in the White House says so.

So, too, the intimate and intrusive questions asked by the health care schemers, backed by the weight and authority of the Internal Revenue Service. Inquiring intellectual minds don’t want to know about that, either.

Fortunately for all of us, the working-class stiffs, often untutored and even crude in their impolite and impolitic curiosity, continue to “glom” onto the holes in the story of how he would be “the uniting president” of “hope and change.”

His approval ratings have dropped into the 30 percent range. Obamacare now frightens most of us.

The fraud and misrepresentation recognized years ago by Joe Sixpack and his buddies is writ so large now that even an egghead can see it.

Let me answer Wes Pruden's question.  "Intellectuals" are not  smart, intelligent or wise, they are glib.  They are good with words.  They are paid to manufacture words by the sentence, paragraph and page.  They infest academia, entertainment and the press.  And in my experience they really like "snark," the wise-ass put-down that isn't a reasoned response but instead dismisses an opponent with ridicule.  It's the stable of some of the highest paid entertainers on TV, people like Jon Stewart at Comedy Central who, believe it or not, is the source of much of the "news" that Gen X receives.  It reinforces their bigotry and class hatred.  And that's Obama's strongest suit; when he's not talking meaningless vapor like "HopeNchange" he's a snarkmaster.  Some people see that as being beneath a President,  the chattering classes see them as one of their own. 

I think that some on the Right are beginning to get it

Some are beginning to understand that the purpose of the Tea Party and it's members in Congress like Ted Cruz, is not primarily to elect Republicans.  It's taken people so long because so much of the political thinking is not concerned with ideas but by parties.  What's bad for Republicans is supposed to be good for Democrats and vice versa.  But that's not necessarily true.  That makes it impossible to see what's really happening.  It's much bigger than that, and some are beginning to get it.  One is Steven Hayward at Powerline.

The conventional wisdom right now is that the government shutdown ranks somewhere between a debacle and a catastrophe for Republicans, and their abject surrender is expected before too much longer. I’m not so sure. While I thought the shutdown was a dubious and unwise tactic, I think taking a longer view may cast a different light on the scene.

First of all, like the sequester, have the majority of Americans noticed its effects beyond what the media has been screaming about? The bullying tactics of forcibly shutting off public spaces like the World War II memorial on the mall has surely inflicted damage on Obama that, had he behaved with minimal restraint, he might have been spared.

It really doesn't matter what Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid cook up as a "compromise." People are beginning to notice, big time, that Big Government isn't working.

Who is helped and who is hurt by that realization?  Neither party is helped, but an emerging ideology is.  And with this in mind, the country that elected a Socialist a little over a year ago, France, is electing members of what the press refers to as "the far right."   Things can change very quickly is you are willing to think outside the box.

Park Service Paramilitaries

Mark Steyn:

But perhaps the most extraordinary story to emerge from the NPS is that of the tour group of foreign seniors whose bus was trapped in Yellowstone Park on the day the shutdown began. They were pulled over photographing a herd of bison when an armed ranger informed them, with the insouciant ad-hoc unilateral lawmaking to which the armed bureaucrat is distressingly prone, that taking photographs counts as illegal “recreation.” “Sir, you are recreating,” the ranger informed the tour guide. And we can’t have that, can we? They were ordered back to the Old Faithful Inn, next to the geyser of the same name, but forbidden to leave said inn to look at said geyser. Armed rangers were posted at the doors, and, just in case one of the wily Japanese or Aussies managed to outwit his captors by escaping through one of the inn’s air ducts and down to the geyser, a fleet of NPS SUVs showed up every hour and a half throughout the day, ten minutes before Old Faithful was due to blow, to surround the geyser and additionally ensure that any of America’s foreign visitors trying to photograph the impressive natural phenomenon from a second-floor hotel window would still wind up with a picture full of government officials. The following morning the bus made the two-and-a-half-hour journey to the park boundary but was prevented from using any of the bathrooms en route, including at a private dude ranch whose owner was threatened with the loss of his license if he allowed any tourist to use the facilities.

The smiling face of the NPS Nazis

Obamacare's Website Is Crashing Because It Doesn't Want You To Know How Costly Its Plans Are

Via the usually reliable Forbes:

A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

HHS didn’t want users to see Obamacare’s true costs

“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.”

Read the whole thing.

 

This sounds eminently believable. ObamaCare was designed to include coverage for things that most people don't want. For example maternity care is not on the "want" list for young single men (a growing category). Neither is mental health coverage or drug dependency. But all these mandated coverages make the basic insurance policies more expensive. But if 50 million people are uninsured today, mainly because insurance is too expensive, why is it better to make coverage even costlier?  Because that's not really the object.

The answer is that Obamacare wasn’t designed to help healthy people with average incomes get health insurance. It was designed to force those people to pay more for coverage, in order to subsidize insurance for people with incomes near the poverty line, and those with chronic or costly medical conditions.

Bud Norman brought the Forbes article to our attention:

Those who are paid to do so directly by the administration are still arguing that it’s all a matter of too much traffic and therefore proof of Obamacare’s overwhelming popularity, but more objective observers have offered two plausible explanations for the problems. The admirably geekish writers at the Infoworld.com web site blame it on cronyism, citing a number of computer experiences who contend that the companies awarded the contract to devise the site are better known for their political connections than their technical expertise, which strikes us as entirely believable. The writers at the usually-reliable Forbes Magazine theorize that the program was deliberately sabotaged by its all-too-shrewd designers, lest the folks trying to log onto the system discover that their health care costs under Obamacare will be far greater than they had been led to believe, and this also seems well within the realm of possibility. Some sorry combination of both explanations could also be true, given how often the government is both inept and nefarious.

If people were allowed to shop the ObamaCare exchanges before the system figured out their subsidy, the sticker-shock would drive everybody away.  So the system is designed to find out what subsides you are eligible for, which is by far the most difficult thing to do because the program needs to search a large number of other governmental data bases which clogs up the system and causes it to simply crash.  Of course, despite subsidies, most people will still pay vastly more for insurance than they want or need. 

So the liars who told us that the attack in Benghazi was the result of a video no one saw are now telling us that the ObamaCare computer roll-out is not working because too many people love them some ObamaCare. And thanks to the stranglehold that the left has on the dinosaur media, not enough people will learn the truth.

 

I guess it's up to the Internet to do the educating. 

OBAMACARE UPDATE

11,588,500 Words: Obamacare Regs 30X Longer Than Law...
States warn of 'bad actors' in exchanges...

Patients Pay Before Seeing Doctor as Deductibles Spread...
Hospitals cut thousands of jobs...

Two Weeks Later, Reporter Still Can't Sign Up...

ARREST WARRANT FOR 'NAVIGATOR'...

Psalm 19

1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Smokey the Thug.

Jon Jarvis, Gute Amerikaner

On the principle of "know your enemy," here's a snapshot of the director of the National Park Service, the man who has been handing on the orders to block aged veterans from their monuments, eject retired couples from their homes, and forbid tourists to take photos of natural parks (hat tip: Clarice Feldman).

 

Jonathan B. Jarvis was appointed director of the NPS in 2009. He was employed by the service since 1976, beginning as an interpreter in the Washington, DC park system. He then served as a park ranger, resource manager, biologist, and chief ranger at parks including Prince William Forest Park in Virginia, Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, and Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and North Cascades National Park in Washington. He acted as superintendent at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and Mount Rainier National Park. In 2002 he was named Regional Director of the Pacific West Region, overseeing parks scattered across tens of thousands of miles in the Pacific.

That's it for Jonathan Jarvis. Nothing out of the ordinary -- no scandals, no controversies, not a word out of place, as far as the record shows. He's a little compulsive about green topics, thinking that his major duties involve "...climate change, urban development, habitat destruction, non-native species, and air and water pollution." But that's nothing unusual in today's NPS.

He's not your typical Obamacrat. Far from it: a career National Parks employee who worked his way up from ranger status straight to the top. Yet at the same time he is diligently and obediently, without protest as far as we know, carrying out the most obnoxious, detestable, and perhaps even illegal orders ever given a man in his position, exactly as if he was a swag-bellied, unqualified precinct captain dragged out of some Southside Chicago ward.

But that's the way it is with career bureaucrats -- like Lois Lerner, John Brennan, Keith Alexander and ten thousand others. We know from the historical record that bureaucrats will avidly commit the most horrendous crimes if ordered by the people at the top of the heap. There's a clear and distinct selection process in operation in bureaucracy. People who progress are those who will do what they're told without blinking. and Jarvis is perfect example.

Just like the "good Germans" just following orders.

Neighbors: Cory Booker never lived in Newark

As Cory Booker looks set to win the junior Senate seat in New Jersey Wednesday, his supposed neighbors in Newark say Mayor Booker doesn’t live in the Gateway City.

Multiple residents of Newark told The Daily Caller that the longtime mayor doesn’t live at any of the addresses he has claimed as home. The mayor is believed to live in New York even though he is registered to run for New Jersey’s special senate election.

No big deal. Democrats don't have to be from their districts or even their states. Hillary parachuted into New York for her Senate seat.

Holy war in Harlem: Pastors want Al Sharpton out

Speak Out Say It Loud, headquartered at Mount Neboh Baptist Church on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd., is a new coalition of black ministers determined to create a unified African-American power base with citywide clout.

They're not opposed to Sharpton's rhetoric, racism and anti-Semitism. They just want a bigger piece of the action.  it's not a Holy War, it's a squabble over who gets paid more in the Race Industry.

Mainstream baffled as French turn to far right

AFP - France's mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the far-right party.

The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with record unemployment, rising taxes and a perceived increase in crime and insecurity.

Like the mainstream press in the US, the French press can't figure out why the people would finally get tired of a bad economy, high unemployment, runaway government spending and a leisure underclass.  And that "far right" crap doesn't work when its candidate gets over 50% of the vote.  That looks mainstream to me.

 

It's why the press, and that includes FOX, doesn't understand what Cruz is doing.

The EBT rap by MrEBT

Obama economy perfectly illustrated when EBT goes down

Da Tech Guy goes shopping and notices that there are few black shoppers.  It turns out that the EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer = aka food stamps) system is down.

I hit a local supermarket to pick up a few things on the way home from work. Right away I noticed something was odd (especially on a Saturday afternoon before a Red Sox playoff game); the place seemed devoid of shoppers.

When I got to the deli counter I heard an announcement that explained it; EBT was down, and no EBT cards could be accepted. This was apparently a statewide problem.

Right after being told they were out of my wife’s favorite Sara Lee Oven Roasted Turkey breast, I finished my shopping and made note of the number of non-white customers. Normally at this location the majority of the customers would be Spanish, and I counted 3 non-white people, as if the clock had been turned back to the 80′s for the city.

EBT of course is not only the province of people of color. As I was leaving a person whose only color was provided by her heavily tattooed body was entering the store. As I was returning my carriage I saw her leaving empty-handed.

A computer glitch in other areas had different results.  It showed EBT cards with unlimited balances.

Via Natural News

When the federal EBT food stamp system suffered a critical failure on Saturday, local retailers were disconnected from the federal food stamp database that keeps track of how much credit is left on each individual EBT card. Seizing the opportunity provided by the glitch, EBT card holders in Louisiana ransacked their local Wal-Mart stores, stuffing their shopping carts full of groceries and "paying" for them with near-empty EBT cards that essentially had unlimited account balances because all accounting was offline.

When the EBT database came back online and card purchase limits were suddenly restored, EBT card holders abandoned their full carts and just walked away, probably miffed that they missed out on participating in the felony theft of groceries.

Da Tech Guy (Peter Ingeni) went to three separate store to try to get some Sarah lee turkey breast for his wife and made this observation.

I shop in these markets on a regular basis and normally they are totally integrated, but the bottom line is with the EBT card system down I could count the number of non-white customers in three supermarkets on the fingers of one hand & still have fingers left over.

Anecdotal evidence or no that’s a startling thing and if I was a liberal I’d be embarrassed by it, but not as embarrassed as I’d be if I was a person of color seeing this and asking myself:

Is not being able to buy food for our families without the government’s aid my community’s reward for giving Barack Obama our votes in overwhelming numbers?

If you want to be angry at me for saying something that’s true, that’s your call. But I submit and suggest that your anger is better directed at the administration that caused my statement to be true in the first place.

I tweeted out my observation which prompted the following reaction

Peter Ingemi ‏@DaTechGuyblog 12 Oct

#ebt system down in ma, on an unrelated note the customer mix at market basket was considerablly different than normal #unexpectedly

dmc ‏@violentfanon 12 Oct

.@DaTechGuyblog You are a piece of shit.

 

As someone remarked, the truth appears to be racist.

Insurrection in DC

Veterans Storm Memorials...
Remove Barricades, Bring to White House...
Police in riot gear...


Tear down these walls," the crowd chanted. Protesters also sang "God bless America" and other patriotic songs as they entered the memorial plaza.

Veterans Remove Barricades from Memorials and Bring Them to White House

"This is the people's memorial," Palin told the crowd. "Our veterans should be above politics."

The memorial has become a political symbol in the bitter fight between Democrats and Republicans over who is at fault since the shutdown began. Earlier rallies have focused on allowing access for World War II veterans visiting from across the country with the Honor Flight Network.

Sunday's rally was more political. A protest by truckers converged with a rally by a group called the Million Vet March at the World War II Memorial. Participants cut the links between metal barriers at the National Park Service site and pushed them aside.

Later some protesters carried barricades to the White House and rallied outside the gates, confronting police in riot gear. Protesters carried one sign reading "Impeach Obama."

Remember the Tea Party rallies?  This is bringing it to Obama's door. 



Will police fire on civilians not obeying orders?

DRUDGE on Sebelius

Sebelius event in Pittsburgh turns into debacle...

Senator calls for resignation...
Two People Attend 'Obamacare and You!' Event...

Thousands of doctors fired by UNITED HEALTHCARE...

CARSON: 'Obamacare Worst Thing That Has Happened In This Nation Since Slavery'...

Are terrorists making dry runs on US aircraft?

TSA says "don't worry your pretty little heads."

Ted Cruz's Remarks at the Values Voter Summit

Why was the Titanic better than Obamacare?

Q: Why was the Titanic better than Obamacare?

A; The Titanic was able to get people on board before it sank to the bottom.

I found this at the Washington Post comment section following this article Some say health-care site’s problems highlight flawed federal IT policies.

Keep in mind that this is the Washington Post which is, along with the NY Times firmly part of the Democrat party.  The article is not good for ObamaCare.  The comments are devastating!  It's possible that the rollout of ObamaCare may actually be the Democrats putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger.