SAR #13018

The US goes to war, killing people in order to help them.

Shearing The Sheep: Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurers must accept everyone who applies, cannot charge more for serious (and costly) medical conditions, and must cover a whole range of previously uncovered conditions. All of which costs more. But because everyone must pay equally, the well will pay as much as the chronically ill. And both are going to pay more. A whole lot more. And that's just the ante.

Preferences:Republicans oppose Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary because he thinks war should be the last resort, not the first.

Little America: America has – by ever larger steps – gone from a nation of laws to a nation of powerful men making laws in secret.  Often even Congress doesn’t know what the Executive is doing; they are not even allowed to know the purported legal basis on which the administration does the things they won't admit to doing. Daily, secretive, unaccountable agencies are making life and death decisions which effect our most basic rights, providing secret evidence to secret courts. They even withhold this secret evidence from the judges, who are instructed to take their word for it. Never mind the wiretaps, the drones, the surveillance, the President has assumed the right and power to murder Americans, without legal process nor challenge. Why? Because we wouldn't understand, because of national security, because they know best. They say. And there is no appeal.

More Numbness: Unemployment claims plummeted (suspiciously) 37,000 to 335,000. Explanations vary.

Freedom From Information: Responding to a FOI lawsuit requiring they produce documents relating to the Justice Department's warrantless use of GPS to track Americans, the Department provided 109 totally blacked out pages and two that did not address the question.

Global Warning: BP says “Burn it, burn it all!”

Business Expense: All the billions that financial institutions are paying in lieu of going to jail for all the mortgage and foreclosure-related crimes they've committed against Americans are tax deductible. Try that with your speeding ticket.

Climate Warming Inaction: Now it's Australia's turn to be the poster child for global warming. But who cares? If getting your voters interested in changing their lifestyles and paying higher costs to slow global warming in their own back yard is impossible, and it is, how the hell are the folks in the US or China going to be persuaded to stop eating high off the hog to save a bunch of Aussies? And what's all this boo-hoo about a wildfire? We have 'em all the time.

11th Commandment: California Republican Tim Donnelly says that guns are “absolutely essential to living the way God intended..” Thou shalt bear assault weapons and shoot the little children.

Going South:Now that they are losing their playground in Afghanistan and have not yet been invited to expand their messing around in Iran, US Special Operations forces are planning to set up paramilitary forces in Mexico to “hunt drug cartels” the same way they went after bin Laden. Old home week; Latin America has such good memories of paramilitary forces. Movie rights have not been optioned.

The Parting Shot: