Fifty years ago today I was near the south end of the playground at Asbury Elementary School in Denver, Colorado. I was in the fourth grade, and we were on our lunch break when one of my classmates, Scott Haskins, who had gone home for lunch, came walking up with a big smile on his face and saying, "The president's been shot!"
We didn't believe him. Scott was kind of a rough kid and often in trouble, and everybody thought he was pulling our legs. But he insisted. We looked at each other and wondered, then went on playing. Only a few minutes later the bell rang and we ran back up to the building and to our classroom on the second floor. As we entered the room and saw our English exchange teacher, Miss Mundy, with her head bowed at her desk, the room suddenly became solemnly still. I knew then.
When everyone was seated, Miss Mundy got up wiping a tear from her eye and stood before us with her hands clasp before her. "There has been a tragedy," she said. "Your president has been killed." We sat in silence, but my skin tingled. She managed a half smile as she looked around at each of us. "It is a sad day for America," she said. "It's a time for you to be with your family. School has been canceled and you are to go straight home." There was no rejoicing. We filed out quietly and went home.
I remember coming in the door and telling my mom, "The president's been shot." "I know," she said to me. She was talking to someone on the phone. That's the end of my memory of that day. I never did think to ask my mother why she was home so early. She usually didn't get home from work until five. Maybe she'd been sent home early too.
It didn't occur to me until much later and I was much older that I think Miss Mundy grasped the magnitude of what had happened perhaps better than a lot of Americans did. Maybe because she was British and had the opportunity to work as a teacher in America she had an appreciation for our society and form of government that many Americans just took for granted. I have no idea what her political persuasions were or if she favored John F. Kennedy or not, but there was an understanding in her tone and demeanor that made me feel proud to be an American, and sad for our loss.
Two days later we were watching the news coverage when Jack Ruby stepped through a crowd in a police station and shot Lee Harvey Oswald. I don't remember now if we saw it live or a replay on the five o'clock news, but Mom turned and looked at me in total shock, "Did you see that?" she asked. "He shot him!" I saw it.
Assassination was not new to American politics. Ever since the dueling days when Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton, congressmen and presidents have been assaulted. In 1856 South Carolina Representative, Preston Brooks, walked into the Senate chamber and attacked Senator Charles Sumner, beating him so severely into unconsciousness with a cane that it took Sumner a year to recover. The first attempt on a president took place on January 30, 1835. A deranged man named Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot President Andrew Jackson, but his pistol misfired. Jackson hit the man with his cane and he pulled out another pistol which also misfired. Then Lawrence was wrestled to the ground by Davy Crockett.
The first president to be assassinated was Abraham Lincoln. The Civil War had ended five days before, and a war-weary president, relaxing for the first time in four years, was shot in the back of his head as he sat in a theater watching the play, Our American Cousin. His was particularly bitter as the war had just ended and his vision for restoring the South "with malice toward none and charity for all," died with him.
On July 2, 1881, James Garfield, in the first year of his administration was shot in the back. He hung on for two and a half months until complications led to a heart attack and he died. Twenty years later almost to the day William McKinley was shot by an anarchist. He lived for eight more days. His successor, Teddy Roosevelt, was the victim of an attempted assassination in 1912, but he survived to live on until 1919. His nephew, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was also the target for an attempted assassination. In 1933 another crazy man took five shots at FDR, killing the mayor of Chicago, but missing the president-elect. Shots were fired at Gerald Ford twice during his short presidency but he was unhurt. Then in 1981, Ronald Reagan came within a quarter inch of being the next assassination victim. Miraculously he survived.
But fifty years ago today it was JFK. This was before Camelot. The First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, had taken the world by storm and at the time was probably a lot more popular than he was. She would create the Camelot image after his death.
All I knew at the time was I didn't like him. It wasn't due to any nine-year-old political savvy. What I knew was what I saw on television. We had an old reddish-brown box, console type TV, about three and a half feet high, with a big speaker on the bottom and the picture tube on top. I remember watching Kennedy give a speech one night, his features somewhat blurred by the old grainy black and white picture, and hearing his New England accent. It made my mom cry and I hated him. "Now I know what a Russian sounds like," I said. Mom quickly corrected me. Near as I can figure that speech was probably about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A half century later there is more confusion about Kennedy and his legacy than ever. At the time of his death he was vilified by Republicans and even some in his own party. He was a welfare liberal who embraced civil rights and was weak on foreign policy, yet today conservatives praise him for cutting taxes and standing up to Kruschev, and are quick to point out that his civil rights bill, which was pushed forward by Lyndon Johnson, only passed because Republicans voted for it. And then there are the lingering conspiracy theories about how many shooters and who was behind it, all made possible because it was caught on film.
Fifty years ago while I played on a playground in Denver, shots rang out from the Texas Book Depository, the grassy knoll, and wherever else in Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Had JFK lived he would be 96. I wonder what he would have thought about his party and the state of the country today?
Friday, November 22, 2013
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Four Score and Seven Years Ago
Seven score and ten years ago, Abraham Lincoln boarded a train bound for the little hamlet of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Four months earlier Gettysburg had been the unlikely scene of the greatest battle ever fought in the western hemisphere. For three days the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia led by the venerable Robert E. Lee slugged it out with the beleaguered Army of the Potomac under its new and nervous commander, George Gordon Meade.
Fought around landmarks that would be etched into military history, Little Round Top, Culp's Hill, the Wheat Field, the Peach Orchard, the Devil's Den, the battle reached its climax on farmland in a shallow valley between two ridges running north and south called appropriately, it seems, Seminary Ridge, and Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand Confederate troops, battle flags waving in the breeze, bayonets gleaming in the sun, marched in perfect order across the mile wide field until they came into range of the Union canons filled with grapeshot, and hell belched forth slaughtering hundreds and leaving gaping holes in the formation. Still they came until they pierced the Union line. Forever remembered as "Pickett's Charge," it was the "ebb tide" of the Confederacy, and came within a hair's breadth of changing history, before it was driven back. Half of the men that made the charge never made it home. Casualty estimates for the entire battle range from 43-51,000, with over 7,000 dead, 27,000 wounded, and another 10,000 missing, either dead, prisoners or deserters.
It took months to clean up the carnage. Most of the bodies were buried in shallow graves until a new National Cemetery was made ready. Thirty-five hundred Union troops were finally buried in the cemetery as well as 3,200 Confederates. Most of the Confederates, however, were later transferred and reinterred in southern cemeteries.
On November 19, 1863, the National Cemetery was dedicated. One of the great orators of the day, Edward Everett, had been asked to give the keynote speech. He spoke for two hours. Almost as an afterthought, the president was invited to come and say a few words. Legend has it that Lincoln hastily wrote his speech on an envelope while riding on the train, but he had actually written it out beforehand, carefully crafting in a few words the true meaning of the American experience.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Eighty-seven years earlier our fathers had signed the Declaration of Independence. I suspect that with the rewriting of American history in our public school textbooks and the dumbing down of our children with such programs as Common Core, which is not based on moral, Christian, or patriotic values, most Americans probably don't realize that not only was America conceived in Liberty, we were the first nation in the history of the world to ever be founded on the belief that people have a right to be free, and that government exists only by the will of the people, and not the other way around.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Honoring our war dead, those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice that we might live on in peace, should be one of the top priorities of not only our government, but of all Americans. How ungrateful and pathetically small it was that during the recent partial government shutdown the current president thumbed his nose at our heroes coming home in caskets. How pitifully selfish it is now that on this momentous occasion, the 150th anniversary of the most well known speech given in American history, he doesn't have time, even though he was invited months ago, to take a twenty minute helicopter flight to Gettysburg to be a part of the ceremony. Here is an event that is "altogether fitting and proper" to do, but he can't be bothered. This is the man who shamelessly compares himself to Lincoln even though he couldn't stand in Lincoln's footsteps, much less in his shoes. The comparisons stop here.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
What else can be said? This paragraph has been dissected, taken apart, scrutinized, and explained by hundreds of writers and commentators, but nobody can say it any better than Lincoln wrote it. What humility in light of those who died, what pathos in honoring their sacrifice, what passion for the cause of freedom, what brilliance in the writing. Who has ever better described a patriot, or more eloquently captured the emotion families and friends suffer when their loved ones give "the last full measure of devotion?" Who has ever better challenged his countrymen "that these dead shall not have died in vain?" Who has ever better understood the Founders's intent in creating a free nation under God "of the people, by the people, for the people?"
This is our America. We are the greatest nation on earth. The question before us is, can we take from our honored dead the increased devotion to have a new birth of constitutional freedom or is this nation going to "perish from the earth?"
We dare not let it.
Fought around landmarks that would be etched into military history, Little Round Top, Culp's Hill, the Wheat Field, the Peach Orchard, the Devil's Den, the battle reached its climax on farmland in a shallow valley between two ridges running north and south called appropriately, it seems, Seminary Ridge, and Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand Confederate troops, battle flags waving in the breeze, bayonets gleaming in the sun, marched in perfect order across the mile wide field until they came into range of the Union canons filled with grapeshot, and hell belched forth slaughtering hundreds and leaving gaping holes in the formation. Still they came until they pierced the Union line. Forever remembered as "Pickett's Charge," it was the "ebb tide" of the Confederacy, and came within a hair's breadth of changing history, before it was driven back. Half of the men that made the charge never made it home. Casualty estimates for the entire battle range from 43-51,000, with over 7,000 dead, 27,000 wounded, and another 10,000 missing, either dead, prisoners or deserters.
It took months to clean up the carnage. Most of the bodies were buried in shallow graves until a new National Cemetery was made ready. Thirty-five hundred Union troops were finally buried in the cemetery as well as 3,200 Confederates. Most of the Confederates, however, were later transferred and reinterred in southern cemeteries.
On November 19, 1863, the National Cemetery was dedicated. One of the great orators of the day, Edward Everett, had been asked to give the keynote speech. He spoke for two hours. Almost as an afterthought, the president was invited to come and say a few words. Legend has it that Lincoln hastily wrote his speech on an envelope while riding on the train, but he had actually written it out beforehand, carefully crafting in a few words the true meaning of the American experience.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Eighty-seven years earlier our fathers had signed the Declaration of Independence. I suspect that with the rewriting of American history in our public school textbooks and the dumbing down of our children with such programs as Common Core, which is not based on moral, Christian, or patriotic values, most Americans probably don't realize that not only was America conceived in Liberty, we were the first nation in the history of the world to ever be founded on the belief that people have a right to be free, and that government exists only by the will of the people, and not the other way around.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Honoring our war dead, those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice that we might live on in peace, should be one of the top priorities of not only our government, but of all Americans. How ungrateful and pathetically small it was that during the recent partial government shutdown the current president thumbed his nose at our heroes coming home in caskets. How pitifully selfish it is now that on this momentous occasion, the 150th anniversary of the most well known speech given in American history, he doesn't have time, even though he was invited months ago, to take a twenty minute helicopter flight to Gettysburg to be a part of the ceremony. Here is an event that is "altogether fitting and proper" to do, but he can't be bothered. This is the man who shamelessly compares himself to Lincoln even though he couldn't stand in Lincoln's footsteps, much less in his shoes. The comparisons stop here.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
What else can be said? This paragraph has been dissected, taken apart, scrutinized, and explained by hundreds of writers and commentators, but nobody can say it any better than Lincoln wrote it. What humility in light of those who died, what pathos in honoring their sacrifice, what passion for the cause of freedom, what brilliance in the writing. Who has ever better described a patriot, or more eloquently captured the emotion families and friends suffer when their loved ones give "the last full measure of devotion?" Who has ever better challenged his countrymen "that these dead shall not have died in vain?" Who has ever better understood the Founders's intent in creating a free nation under God "of the people, by the people, for the people?"
This is our America. We are the greatest nation on earth. The question before us is, can we take from our honored dead the increased devotion to have a new birth of constitutional freedom or is this nation going to "perish from the earth?"
We dare not let it.
Friday, November 15, 2013
I Told You So
Who said the following? (Hint - it was not Ronald Reagan.)
"The theme of this movie is whether men are to be ruled by God's law or whether they are to be ruled by a dictator.... Are men the property of the state or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today."
These comments were made by Cecil B. DeMille when he introduced his 1956 epic film, The Ten Commandments. He further explained that the story was about "the birth of freedom." The movie premiered during the dark days of the growing Cold War. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956 and communism was on the march. DeMille gave perspective to the ideological battle going on around the world. How poignant and even prophetic his comments were. How ironic that twenty-two years after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union we are still fighting this battle. Only this time it's not with tyrants around the globe, it's with the one in the White House.
The battleground for the struggle we are in now is the misnamed Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Even though an attempt by the Republican Party to defund or delay the act led to a partial government shutdown, the law went into affect on October 1. It was an immediate disaster. Within minutes of opening the incompetently created website crashed, and it has continued to crash. After six weeks less than 50,000 people have signed up for a policy on the government exchange, and only another 50,000 or so have signed up on state run exchanges. In order to reach its March 31 goal of seven million enrollees, 39,000 need to sign up every day. What's worse, over five million people have had their insurance plans canceled.
Obama's promise about people being able to keep the insurance plan they had was finally exposed for the lie it has always been. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, who is responsible for the website failure, repeatedly lied to the House Oversight Committee about the program's readiness and the progress being made getting it fixed. The president's poll numbers plummeted to under forty percent, and finally some Democrats began to jump ship telling Obama he needs to fix the problem, and preparing bills to authorize a delay in the requirement to get health insurance by March.
Yesterday Obama finally came down out of the clouds to offer a solution. But what he offered wasn't a solution. Without apologizing for anything he told the insurance companies to reinstate the five million policies that they have canceled and to keep them in place for another year. Sounds good except for one thing. The insurance companies have been preparing for this for the last three years. They just spent thousands on man hours, paper, ink and postage sending out cancelation letters, and they've deleted those policies from their computers. Chances are they aren't going to spend the money to rewrite and send out five million reinstatement letters, nor waste the thousands of hours it would take to rebuild the policies they no longer have, only to send out the cancelation letters again next year. Obama's ruling will delay the penalties for not signing up for another year, but chances are most of those five million that lost their policies are not going to get their insurance back within the next year.
There is method to his madness. Democrats are trying to distance themselves from the Obamacare catastrophe so the fix is not so much about the AFA as it is about getting the Democrats off the hook. Obama has now put the burden back on the insurance companies to reinsure people and if they don't you can be sure he will blame the evil insurance charlatans for leaving people without any health care.
The one thing that everybody seems to be overlooking, however, according to Charles Krauthammer, is the continual tromping on the Constitution. He is right. The AFA is law passed by Congress and signed by Obama. Obama's only authority is to implement the law, yet he has personally altered it, given exemptions, and now delayed it, (after shutting down the government because he refused to negotiate on delaying it). He has no constitutional authority to do any of this. It is the responsibility of Congress to make the changes, but even Congress has taken a pass and allowed Obama to get away with it.
This is tyranny. This is a dictator imposing his will on free souls under God. This is the ideological warfare we are waging that will determine whether or not we will continue to be free.
There may be a silver lining in all of Obama's duplicity. The AFA needs seven million people enrolled by the end of next March for the system to work, but Obama just delayed the individual mandate for a year. With the slow number of people signing up now, and with no penalties coming for another year, and with the website debacle as it is, they aren't likely to be anywhere near the seven million needed by next March and the whole program may collapse on itself. Obama may have just signed the death warrant to Obamacare.
And to all those whom I've been debating this with over the internet, probably none of whom are reading this now anyway, those who have called me racist, hateful, ignorant, biased, arrogant, proud, stupid, and told me I belonged on another planet, I have one thing to say, ... I told you so.
"The theme of this movie is whether men are to be ruled by God's law or whether they are to be ruled by a dictator.... Are men the property of the state or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today."
These comments were made by Cecil B. DeMille when he introduced his 1956 epic film, The Ten Commandments. He further explained that the story was about "the birth of freedom." The movie premiered during the dark days of the growing Cold War. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956 and communism was on the march. DeMille gave perspective to the ideological battle going on around the world. How poignant and even prophetic his comments were. How ironic that twenty-two years after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union we are still fighting this battle. Only this time it's not with tyrants around the globe, it's with the one in the White House.
The battleground for the struggle we are in now is the misnamed Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Even though an attempt by the Republican Party to defund or delay the act led to a partial government shutdown, the law went into affect on October 1. It was an immediate disaster. Within minutes of opening the incompetently created website crashed, and it has continued to crash. After six weeks less than 50,000 people have signed up for a policy on the government exchange, and only another 50,000 or so have signed up on state run exchanges. In order to reach its March 31 goal of seven million enrollees, 39,000 need to sign up every day. What's worse, over five million people have had their insurance plans canceled.
Obama's promise about people being able to keep the insurance plan they had was finally exposed for the lie it has always been. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, who is responsible for the website failure, repeatedly lied to the House Oversight Committee about the program's readiness and the progress being made getting it fixed. The president's poll numbers plummeted to under forty percent, and finally some Democrats began to jump ship telling Obama he needs to fix the problem, and preparing bills to authorize a delay in the requirement to get health insurance by March.
Yesterday Obama finally came down out of the clouds to offer a solution. But what he offered wasn't a solution. Without apologizing for anything he told the insurance companies to reinstate the five million policies that they have canceled and to keep them in place for another year. Sounds good except for one thing. The insurance companies have been preparing for this for the last three years. They just spent thousands on man hours, paper, ink and postage sending out cancelation letters, and they've deleted those policies from their computers. Chances are they aren't going to spend the money to rewrite and send out five million reinstatement letters, nor waste the thousands of hours it would take to rebuild the policies they no longer have, only to send out the cancelation letters again next year. Obama's ruling will delay the penalties for not signing up for another year, but chances are most of those five million that lost their policies are not going to get their insurance back within the next year.
There is method to his madness. Democrats are trying to distance themselves from the Obamacare catastrophe so the fix is not so much about the AFA as it is about getting the Democrats off the hook. Obama has now put the burden back on the insurance companies to reinsure people and if they don't you can be sure he will blame the evil insurance charlatans for leaving people without any health care.
The one thing that everybody seems to be overlooking, however, according to Charles Krauthammer, is the continual tromping on the Constitution. He is right. The AFA is law passed by Congress and signed by Obama. Obama's only authority is to implement the law, yet he has personally altered it, given exemptions, and now delayed it, (after shutting down the government because he refused to negotiate on delaying it). He has no constitutional authority to do any of this. It is the responsibility of Congress to make the changes, but even Congress has taken a pass and allowed Obama to get away with it.
This is tyranny. This is a dictator imposing his will on free souls under God. This is the ideological warfare we are waging that will determine whether or not we will continue to be free.
There may be a silver lining in all of Obama's duplicity. The AFA needs seven million people enrolled by the end of next March for the system to work, but Obama just delayed the individual mandate for a year. With the slow number of people signing up now, and with no penalties coming for another year, and with the website debacle as it is, they aren't likely to be anywhere near the seven million needed by next March and the whole program may collapse on itself. Obama may have just signed the death warrant to Obamacare.
And to all those whom I've been debating this with over the internet, probably none of whom are reading this now anyway, those who have called me racist, hateful, ignorant, biased, arrogant, proud, stupid, and told me I belonged on another planet, I have one thing to say, ... I told you so.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Rollout Hearing
Did anybody watch the House hearings on the obamacare rollout disaster yesterday? Democrats on the committee led by Henry Waxman kept repeating the worn out blather that the system is working, people are getting insurance premiums lowered, and the Republicans are to blame for shutting down the government. Charles Rangel gave a history lesson that is only true in little pea-brained Democrat minds saying Republicans were against Social Security ad nauseum.
Several Democrats made comparisons to the Bush Medicare Part D rollout because it was slow at first also. The difference, of course, is that there was no mandate forcing people to buy Medicare Part D, and they had no expectations or need for millions to sign up in the first few months.
Sebelius, after apologizing for the rollout failure, then went on to blame Verizon for the shutdowns, and said the website had never crashed, even though it had crashed three times over last weekend and was offline at that very moment. When asked about the Obama promise that you can keep your health care plan, period, she said that was three years ago, even though Obama said it again last month. She defended it by saying that the plans people are losing are inferior plans, and when reminded that people are finding the new costs up to 400% higher, she said the website allows them to shop around. She completely ignored the problem that every plan you can shop around for costs more. Obama's lie about keeping your policy got lost in the shuffle and it came down essentially that people have to pay more because it's their own fault. When asked about delaying the individual mandate she said "No," because it's the law. When confronted about single men needing maternity care in their insurance she said, some men need maternity care.
I would say fools are generally irrational, and you can't argue with irrationality. Men, as well as 70 year old women, needing maternity care is pretty irrational. In fact, there was a whole lot of irrationality coming from the Democrat side yesterday. One old codger even got up wanting to fight a Republican. He claimed 17 million children would be uninsured without obamacare and accused the Republicans of not having a plan. The congressman he was arguing with said it was a false choice because there are other ways to cover the children and he held up a bill he planned to introduce today for an alternate plan. Unfortunately the Republicans were all over the place with their questions and they failed to hold Sebelius' nose to the question of what Obama knew and when.
The most focused Republicans were a couple of congresswomen who didn't waste any time with niceties and thanking Sebelius for being there and were pretty much on fire asking their questions. It's too bad the rest of the committee wasn't as forceful as they were. One congressman from Texas tried to get cute referring to the Wizard of Oz and telling Sebelius she wasn't in Kansas anymore. It basically backfired on him from Democrat ridicule.
The hearing finally ended after three and a half hours. I watched about two hours of it, but I had to keep leaving and coming back because some of the things people were saying were so asinine I couldn't stand to listen, and I didn't get all their names either. I'd say I really don't know what they accomplished except to prove that Sebelius can lie as well as the rest of them, and even though at one point she took the blame for the failure, it was only to protect someone she had just fingered as responsible. Just like in all the Obama scandals, no one has yet been held accountable for anything, and Sebelius has no plans to hang anyone.
The Democrats left the hearing with the same fog in their eyes that they came in with, and went back to the Lala Land in which they live. The Republicans walked out having failed to nail Sebelius when she could so easily have been nailed. And Washington goes on in its mad rush to destruction.
Several Democrats made comparisons to the Bush Medicare Part D rollout because it was slow at first also. The difference, of course, is that there was no mandate forcing people to buy Medicare Part D, and they had no expectations or need for millions to sign up in the first few months.
Sebelius, after apologizing for the rollout failure, then went on to blame Verizon for the shutdowns, and said the website had never crashed, even though it had crashed three times over last weekend and was offline at that very moment. When asked about the Obama promise that you can keep your health care plan, period, she said that was three years ago, even though Obama said it again last month. She defended it by saying that the plans people are losing are inferior plans, and when reminded that people are finding the new costs up to 400% higher, she said the website allows them to shop around. She completely ignored the problem that every plan you can shop around for costs more. Obama's lie about keeping your policy got lost in the shuffle and it came down essentially that people have to pay more because it's their own fault. When asked about delaying the individual mandate she said "No," because it's the law. When confronted about single men needing maternity care in their insurance she said, some men need maternity care.
I would say fools are generally irrational, and you can't argue with irrationality. Men, as well as 70 year old women, needing maternity care is pretty irrational. In fact, there was a whole lot of irrationality coming from the Democrat side yesterday. One old codger even got up wanting to fight a Republican. He claimed 17 million children would be uninsured without obamacare and accused the Republicans of not having a plan. The congressman he was arguing with said it was a false choice because there are other ways to cover the children and he held up a bill he planned to introduce today for an alternate plan. Unfortunately the Republicans were all over the place with their questions and they failed to hold Sebelius' nose to the question of what Obama knew and when.
The most focused Republicans were a couple of congresswomen who didn't waste any time with niceties and thanking Sebelius for being there and were pretty much on fire asking their questions. It's too bad the rest of the committee wasn't as forceful as they were. One congressman from Texas tried to get cute referring to the Wizard of Oz and telling Sebelius she wasn't in Kansas anymore. It basically backfired on him from Democrat ridicule.
The hearing finally ended after three and a half hours. I watched about two hours of it, but I had to keep leaving and coming back because some of the things people were saying were so asinine I couldn't stand to listen, and I didn't get all their names either. I'd say I really don't know what they accomplished except to prove that Sebelius can lie as well as the rest of them, and even though at one point she took the blame for the failure, it was only to protect someone she had just fingered as responsible. Just like in all the Obama scandals, no one has yet been held accountable for anything, and Sebelius has no plans to hang anyone.
The Democrats left the hearing with the same fog in their eyes that they came in with, and went back to the Lala Land in which they live. The Republicans walked out having failed to nail Sebelius when she could so easily have been nailed. And Washington goes on in its mad rush to destruction.
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