Monday, October 28, 2013

Patrick J. Buchanan on ObamaCare Specifically and the Age of Obama in General



A barkerization of Buchanan's latest column:

The pots and pans are clanging for the ouster of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as the ObamaCare website roll-out takes on the aspect of that of the Edsel.

Sebelius’ continuance testifies more eloquently than any attack ad just how far Obama’s beliefs about government and political philosophy are beyond the Middle American mainstream.

In most great U.S. corporations, if an executive had three years to roll out the product on which the company’s future might depend, and delivered this debacle, he would be gone. Panic would ensue. Emergency meetings of the board would be held to determine if more heads should roll and who should be brought in to save the company.

(*NOD*)

Outside of government, people routinely pay for their mistakes.

* TRUE...

Inside, there is often no penalty, no price, no punishment for failure.

* ALSO TRUE...

To Obama, a mess that has members of his own party calling for suspending ObamaCare for a year is just the result of “glitches.” (Good enough for government work.)

(*SMIRK*)

Here in D.C., many live outside the laws that rule the rest of America.

* YES...!!!

Average salaries are higher and benefits superior to the private sector.

* TRUE...!!!

Job security is greater.

(*NOD*)

In-grade promotions and pay hikes are routine. And that ruthless meritocratic principle — success brings promotions, failure leads to demotions and departure — is suspended.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

While no startup company, symphony orchestra, chess club or hockey team would, a priori, insist that every racial and ethnic group, gender and sexual preference be represented at birth, such nonsense is serious business here. Here in D.C., affirmative action comes first, before excellence, diversity before efficiency. How else did Obama himself soar from Hawaii’s “Choom Gang” through Columbia, Harvard and Harvard Law?

(By busting his chops for years in the library?)

* ME THINKS NOT!

(*SNORT*)

Sebelius remains at her post despite manifest incompetence for reasons both ideological and political.

* TRUE... RIGHT? (ANYBODY WANNA CLAIM OTHERWISE?)

She is a pro-choice Catholic, a feminist, an early Obamaite, a crony of the president, an apparatchik of the Party of Government. She is a queen in Obamaland.

* A DUTCHESS. (THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE QUEEN!)

Like many of his generation, Obama himself is a skilled verbalist. He talks and reads teleprompter well. As for executive, managerial and operational skills, however, upon what ground would he stand to dismiss Sebelius?

* ON THE GROUNDS SHE'S A TOTAL INCOMPETENT...???

President Obama was himself clueless as to the extent and severity of the problems in his signature legislation.

(*SHRUG*)

* MAYBE HE WAS... MAYBE HE WASN'T... THE STORY KEEPS CHANGING. (ONE THING WE KNOW: WE CAN'T TAKE THIS ADMINISTRATION AT THEIR WORD.)

Two weeks after the Benghazi massacre, President Obama was still parroting the Susan Rice line about anti-Islamic videos, which the CIA knew within hours had had nothing to do with the murder of Ambassador Stevens.

(*SHRUG*)

Obama had no idea for three years his IRS might be slow-walking Tea Party applications for tax exemptions.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

He wasn’t in the loop about Eric Holder’s phone taps on Fox News or the Associated Press.

* OR OPERATION FAST AND FURIOUS...

(*SNORTING WHILE SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Nobody told him.

* NOPE. EVERYONE WAS "HIDING" CRUCIAL INFORMATION FROM THE... er... COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. (HOW LIKELY DO YOU FIND THIS SCENARIO, FOLKS? ME? NOT VERY!)

The President has not been more deeply implicated in the scandals since re-election because he could credibly say, “How was I supposed to know what was going on?”

* NICE TO HAVE THE MEDIA LARGELY IN ONE'S CORNER, HUH?

Today, more than ever, America’s private and public sectors run on separate rails by different rules.

Liberal Democrats own the public sector.

Washington, D.C., where the federal and the local government provide the lion’s share of the jobs, has never once gone Republican.

In 2008, D.C. went for Obama 93%-6%. The town belongs to the regime. Yet, when Washington needs something vital done, the city bypasses its stagnant bureaucracy and goes outside — to private enterprise and private contractors.

* ONE... MORE... TIME...

Yet, when Washington needs something vital done, the city bypasses its stagnant bureaucracy and goes outside — to private enterprise and private contractors.

* TRUE... RIGHT?

Yet, though millions of Americans outside government do the jobs that government needs done and is manifestly incompetent to do, the state remains a virtual object of worship. The Left see the state as the people, the nation, incarnate. To them, it is us. In the secularized society in which we live, government is now, to many, not only next to God. Government is God.

* OVERSTATED? PERHAPS. AND IF SO JUST REPLACE THE ABOVE WITH THIS SIMPLY QUESTION: DO OR DO NOT MUST PEOPLE EXPECT GOVERNMENT TO DO LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF STUFF... TO SERVE NOT ONLY AS THE "PROVIDER" OF LAST RESORT, BUT FAR TOO OFTEN THE "PROVIDER" OF FIRST RESORT?

In World War II, FDR brought together the men who made things in America, dollar-a-year industrialists who swiftly took charge and met his immediate demand for 50,000 planes and 1,600 ships. They built the most awesome military machine the world had ever seen, arming 12 million Americans, Russia and England as well, and smashing two mighty empires on opposite sides of the world. And these men did it in about as long a time as it took Barack Obama’s regime, captained by Kathleen Sebelius, to flunk a test to create a website.

There is something deeply wrong with our Republic.

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