RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama and his closest advisers need to invest in a new crystal ball.

When Obamacare’s health-insurance exchanges opened in 2014, the administration predicted that the marketplaces would quickly thrive — and offer consumers a wide range of affordable coverage options.

But today, three enrollment periods later, the exchanges are on the brink of collapse. Major insurers are quitting, premiums are skyrocketing, enrollment is below expectations, and the administration is taking increasingly desperate measures to paper over the problems. By this time next year, the exchanges could be out of business.

This month, the Obama administration reported that exchange enrollment had plunged by 1.6 million in the first three months of 2016, to 11.1 million. It could dip below 10 million by December if exchange shoppers quit paying their premiums — or are unable to prove citizenship — over the rest of this year at the same rate they’ve done so in the past.

Those enrollment figures are less than half of what the Congressional Budget Office had been forecasting.

And consumers aren’t the only ones bailing on Obamacare’s exchanges. Insurers are doing the same. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota recently announced that it would pull out of the state’s individual market after losing half a billion dollars. Health Care Services Corporation pulled its Blue Cross affiliate out of New Mexico’s exchange last year after the state denied it a 50 percent premium hike.

The nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth, has pulled out of exchanges in all but a handful of states. And 16 of the 23 non-profit, state-chartered co-ops created by Obamacare to sell affordable insurance plans have gone bankrupt.

Outside the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland Wednesday, the 60s reenactors were venting in the usual style. Donald Trump was in the building but again the dominant themes were American security and the Democratic nominee.

“This threat is real and it is here,” said Florida governor Rick Scott. “The next president must destroy this evil.” The current administration had projected weakness on the international stage and radical Islamic terrorism was ascendant. “We need a president who will wipe it off the face of the earth,” and in Scott’s view that was not Hillary Clinton.

Radio host Laura Ingraham lamented that “our allies don’t respect us anymore” and that “The Democrats’ answer is to nominate the woman who helped orchestrate America’s decline.”

For Florida Attorney General Pam Biondi, Hillary Clinton “believes our enemies deserve our respect and empathy.” By contrast, “Donald Trump believes terrorists deserve to die,” and the conventioneers responded with cheers. “Send ISIS a message that we are really coming after them,” Biondi said. “Donald Trump will.”

Ralph Alvarado, a state senator from Kentucky, whose father is from Costa Rica and mother from Argentina, charged that President Obama has “made America more divided than ever.” The administration had also failed on Benghazi, the “Fast and Furious” scandal, and the Iran nuclear deal, “and with Hillary Clinton the nightmare will be worse.”

African American pastor Darrell Scott told the convention that “the Democratic Party has failed us” and that liberals were afraid to use the word “patriot.” Abroad the United States was “no longer respected.” Scott called for a “Greater America” and defense of the Constitution.

“Climate change is not our biggest problem,” said Harold Hamm of Continental Resources, a shale oil company. “It’s Islamic terrorism.” In Hamm’s view, Donald Trump would be the first president to bring about energy independence. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, “would eliminate it.”

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said Trump was willing to name the threat for what it is, “radical Islamic terrorism,” and he called for “absolute victory for our troops.” Hillary Clinton, Walker said, is “the ultimate liberal insider. If any more on the inside, she would be in prison.”

Recalling FBI director James Comey’s recent testimony, Scott said “I wouldn’t give Hillary Clinton the password to my iPhone, let alone to classified information.” And for those security reasons, “Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president.”

CLEVELAND — Ted Cruz did the Republican Party no favors last night when he pointedly refused to endorse GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, breaking a promise he and other rival candidates made at the outset of the primary campaign last year.

Cruz also made what appeared to be some kind of overture to race baiters by mentioning aspiring cop-killer Alton Sterling who was recently shot dead by Baton Rouge police during an altercation. It seemed very odd, but maybe in retrospect it shouldn’t. After all, Cruz went along with leftists and a few other GOPers by baselessly smearing Trump as a racist after he urged the deportation of millions of illegal aliens.

Of course Cruz is not the only contender for the Republican nod to go back on his word but he is the most high-profile and he won the second-highest number of convention delegates after Trump. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who also had intense run-ins with Trump throughout the primary process, swallowed his pride and appeared in a video last night endorsing Trump.

It is true that during the primary campaign Trump launched some nasty, low-blow attacks on Cruz (and others). He retweeted an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife, Heidi, juxtaposed with a photo of Trump’s beauty queen wife, Melania, a move that was interpreted as a dig at Mrs. Cruz’s appearance. He embraced a crazy conspiracy theory that put Cruz’s father at the heart of the John F. Kennedy assassination. He saddled Cruz with the undeserved nickname “Lyin’ Ted.”

But the convention is supposed to be where these matters are settled, the aggrieved individuals and factions reconciled, and the party united to take on the other party in November. As the saying goes, politics ain’t beanbag — and America’s future is too important to jeopardize over one’s own hurt feelings.

It was a huge missed opportunity for Cruz to bring Republicans together and it is dangerous because many hardcore Cruz backers will now feel justified in withholding their support in November for the GOP’s nominee.

Cruz could not swallow his pride. The Texas senator was loudly booed off the stage at the Republican National Convention after he humiliated the GOP’s new standard bearer by urging Americans to “vote your conscience.” The boos and howling by delegates were powerful enough that they could be felt way up in the rafters of the Quicken Loans Arena.

Cruz and his wife Heidi had to be escorted out of the arena after the crowd grew angry.

Any event like the Republican National Convention requires a great deal of security. There are so many high-profile personalities, for one thing. For another, it’s just too high-profile an event to not have a lot of security.

With needs like that, it’s unsurprising that police have been brought in from out of town. Those officers are being housed at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Apparently, the special snowflakes who go to school there got a case of the vapors just thinking about the boys in blue being so near:

The students were incensed that school officials had agreed to allow police officers imported to maintain order during the convention to stay in campus housing. More than 300 [students] signed an online petition demanding that, among other things, the “riot police” store their weapons off-campus between shifts, restrict themselves exclusively to the residence halls, and abide by university rules regarding anti-discrimination and sexual harassment.
Some students even asked to be moved to alternative housing for the week, saying the increased police presence caused them to “fear for their safety” following the shooting deaths of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.

“I am scared and concerned for students of color, queer* and trans* students and all university community members at the mercy of an arbitrarily expanded police force without clear oversight or attachment to the community,” wrote one petitioner, Shannon Groll. “Please, protect CWRU as a safe space for all bodies.”

“I am deeply troubled by the presence — even temporarily — of a militarized police force on the CWRU campus,” wrote Keith Fitch. “The number one priority for an educational institution is to guarantee a safe environment for its students, faculty, and staff.”

Let me be blunt here: These students are not concerned about anyone’s safety.

Two police officers were assaulted during clashes with communist agitators outside the Republican National Convention on Wednesday. Their attempt to burn the American flag devolved into scuffles with the police and others, leading to eighteen arrests.

The officers received minor injuries, Cleveland’s police department said.

Yahoo News reported that it was “unclear what protesters were demonstrating about,” but their screeches about United States genocide, endless wars and Black Lives Matter could be heard during the melee. Their pre-printed signs read, “America was never great! We need to overthrow this system.” The protesters bill themselves as the “voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA.”

Via Yahoo News:

Tensions between police and protesters began to rise after they tried to burn an American flag. Police officers rushed in to put out the flames. Protesters were given an order to disperse, and some refused.Photos of the protest showed a man dressed in black, wearing a black cap, waving the burning flag in the air.

According to Cleveland’s police department, the man accidentally set himself, and others, on fire.

Sexist! Racist! Fascist! Along with the feral Left’s violence outside the GOP presidential candidate’s rallies, those accusations have been the soundtrack of Hillary Clinton’s orchestrated smear campaign. No surprise there, but why are some conservatives joining the chorus?
What is it about Trump that some conservatives find so distressing? You’d expect progressives to be disturbed, of course, even before you get to policies. Trump is a manly, no nonsense, successful businessman. When you do consider policies, the nightmare deepens.

He is unashamedly proud of his country, and has made it clear that when it comes to foreign policy and trade, he intends to put its interests first. He is pro-life, and supports police and the military. He supports Israel, and Israel’s right to defend itself. He does not buy into currently popular (and in some circles mandatory) issues like global warming and multiculturalism.

A horror story for progressives. But why are some conservatives also lining up under the #nevertrump banner? Only a few percent; not enough to influence the outcome of the Republican Convention. But a few percent of conservatives who refuse to vote, or vote for a third party candidate, may be all it takes to get Hillary Clinton over the line and into the White House.

First in the litany of Trump’s faults is this: He’s a fascist! The word fascist comes from Latin fasces, a bundle of rods tied together, sometimes with a protruding axe blade. In Roman times it was symbol of magisterial authority. The meaning is that the state is stronger when all its members think and act in concert. Fascism subsumes the interests of individuals and families to the perceived needs of the state, in the belief that citizens are eventually better off if everyone serves the same purposes and works towards the same objectives.

Explaining in detail why this is wrong and does not work would take a much longer essay than this. The question for now is, “Is this the position that Donald Trump espouses?” Hardly. Trump’s central policy positions are small, low-tax, non-interventionist government, free speech, and individual and family rights. The exact opposite of an authoritarian, all-encompassing central government.

Well, then, he’s a racist! Racism is not intrinsic to fascism, although the two are often conflated. Is Trump a racist? No one has been able to point to specific instances where Trump has abused or disadvantaged anyone on the basis of race. He has been publicly supported by black and Hispanic staff and former staff, by black pastors and business people, by immigrants of a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, many of whom who share his concern over illegal immigration. It is assumed in some circles that if you believe illegal immigration is a problem, you must do so on the basis of race, because you are xenophobic. Showing that to be untrue is as easy as going to Youtube and looking for Hispanics for Trump.

Well then, he is an islamophobe! Here, as others have pointed out, it isn’t a phobia if there is genuinely something to fear. Since September 11, 2001, over 28,000 terror attacks have been made on civilians specifically in the name of Allah and Muhammad. In the name of all other religions? About one-tenth of one percent of that figure. ISIS, and before ISIS Al Qaeda, have called on all muslims everywhere to undertake random murders of civilian populations in non-muslim countries. Very few will take up that call. But very few will speak out against those who do, or explain how the Koran’s command to “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” is to be set aside while at the same time maintaining the Quran’s commands apply for all time to all muslims everywhere. There is sufficient reason to be concerned, despite the French Prime Minister’s pronouncement after Nice that we must get used to living with terror, or Waleed Aly’s claim after the Boston bombing that terrorism is not an existential threat, merely “an irritant”. How to deal with Islamic terror is another question, but recognising that it is a problem is a good first step. Taking ordinary people’s fears about it seriously is a good second step.

Two speeches at the opening night of the GOP Convention stood in stark contrast in both their content and their treatment by the lamestream media. The chattering class on the left focused on Melania Trump’s alleged plagiarism of Michelle Obama’s speech in 2008. They have largely ignored Patricia Smith, mother of Benghazi casualty Sean Smith, and her documentation of Hillary’s lies to the parents of the Benghazi dead in front of their son’s caskets.

Melania may have paraphrased too close to the edge, but borrowing clichés about hard work and family does not plagiarism make and, even so, plagiarism is not perjury, as serial liar Hillary Clinton arguably committed in testimony under oath before Congress, Neither did she show Hillary’s callous disregard for the families of the Benghazi dead that Patricia Smith focused on in her riveting convention speech:

“I know a few things could’ve been done to prevent it. But nobody’s admitting to anything. Right now, my understanding is Hillary didn’t do a damn thing. And I wonder what she did as Secretary of State, because she disavows everything. She disavows the fact that she even got any call for security… If this is her Department, she certainly doesn’t know how to run the Department. And she lied the whole time. She lied to me and called me a liar on TV,” Smith continues.

“She told me it was the fault of the video… And later when I mentioned that, she said she never said anything like that to me. How can a woman be this way!

“She said ‘One of us is a liar, and it wasn’t me,’” Smith recalls Hillary saying on air later.

“I am not a liar! I know what Hillary told me! In fact… I’ve spoken to quite a few different people – Hillary and Obama, Panetta, Susan Rice, and several others… every one of them told me it was the fault of the video, including Obama – and he denies it!

“Please, tell the world. Tell the world what she’s really like.”

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani became the latest to try to break through the media indifference to the fact that Hillary Clinton muffed her 3 AM phone call during the Benghazi terrorist attack and then lied about it later, including repeating the lie about an inflammatory video causing the attack:

Her dereliction of duty and failure to keep her people safe played a major role as you heard tonight in the horrific Islamic terrorist murders on September 11 and 12, 2012 in Benghazi which claimed the lives of four brave Americans: Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and CIA agents Tyrone S. Woods, and Glen Doherty. May they rest in peace.

And Clinton, and the Obama administration, for political reasons, lied about the purpose of the attacks including Hillary Clinton lying directly to the families of the people who were killed — right to their face!

Hillary Clinton’s answer to Congress about the death of these four brave Americans because of her gross failures as Secretary of State was, “What difference at this point does it make?”

In an opinion piece in Newsweek, Ali Albassam recounts the terrible ordeal of suspicious looks and unfriendly behavior she encounters on a daily basis just because of her Muslim faith.

In my eyes, I was as American as anyone else my age. I celebrated the Fourth of July with my family, played high school sports and shared many of the same interests as my peers.

But after 9/11, I was frequently bullied in school and harassed in public, especially when I was with a relative who wore a headscarf. These changes made me paranoid, and I struggled with an identity crisis. Seemingly overnight, I went from being a regular American to public enemy number one — by virtue of my faith.

Unfortunately, the political and social climate for American Muslims has only worsened over time. Anti-Muslim discrimination is now mainstream and heavily ingrained within U.S. culture. We see it on TV news and in Hollywood movies that continuously depict Muslims as terrorists.

Well, maybe if her Muslim brethren would stop butchering, maiming, plowing down, beheading, and blowing up non-Muslims just because they are non-Muslims — all done in the name of her faith (Allahu Akbar) – Ms. Albassam might not have to suffer the horrors of mean looks. But no. Ms. Albassam does not point the finger at her own tribe as the root cause of her terrible suffering but at the U.S. non-Muslim citizenry for blaming all Muslims for the actions of a tiny minority.

Certainly it would be stupid to blame all postal workers for a postal worker that goes postal. Ditto for blaming all mothers for leaving their kids to suffocate in their car while they shop. But is it a logical fallacy (hasty generalization smear tactics) to maintain that all members of the KKK share the blame for the actions of a few; or all members of the American Nazi Party for the actions of a few? Of course not: they share an ideology that motivates such actions. Now, following the example of our president, it can be maintained that such heinous acts committed in the name of Allah are not the real Islam. But so what? It is how the brutal madmen and their Mullahs interpret Islam that counts, it is Islamic culture and culture cells all over the world that produce such sadistic zombies and no one else. With headlines like this coming in from all over the world on a daily basis

U.S.-Backed ‘Moderate’ Rebels Behead a Child Near Aleppo

Muslim in France stabs woman and girls for immodest dress

what exactly is the rational reaction? A little suspicion and animosity that Ms. Albassam might just be sympathetic to her brothers in faith? Until Muslims point the finger at their own and place the blame where it belongs, suspicion is warranted. As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, innocent until proven guilty works in the courtroom but not daily life:

“Senator Cruz was offered a place on the podium despite his failure to honor his pledge. He spoke glowingly of freedom and the right to choose. But he fell short of endorsing Trump. He will likely pay a price in his future endeavors. Trump invited him to speak without an endorsement, but he was not gracious in return. His pride will certainly be remembered should Trump fail to win the presidency. He was positioning himself for 2020. Will the Trump supporters in the audience forget this slight? Could he not recognize the difference between Trump and Clinton he so eloquently elucidated in his speech?”

The third night of the Republican National Convention provided observers with that moment of true ethics and honor. Governor Kasich has not attended the convention and will not endorse Donald Trump. He claims to be a man of conviction, but what conviction? Or is he a sore loser? What about Governor Jeb Bush, who will not attend? Is he still upset because he was called a loser or low energy? Did he think the $100 million raised by his campaign should ensure his victory?

Could they be willing to elect Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump? Would they saddle us with Supreme Court judges and federal judges appointed by Hillary Clinton? Their ethics are less conservative and constitutional than personal. Their pride will certainly help Clinton in this election.

Senator Graham did not attend. At one point he planned to honor his pledge, but then he recanted. One can understand Senator McCain’s and President Bush’s failure to participate; but why would Governor Mitt Romney take Trump’s money in 2012 but refuse to vote for him in 2016? Why would he work so hard to hurt Trump’s candidacy and help Hillary? Could his pride be involved? After all, his loss in 2012 was decried by Trump.

President Obama visited Elkhart, Indiana, on June 1 to tout the state’s economic recovery, taking credit for its success and claiming that it represents the 2016 election’s basic policy choice. He’s right, but the economic lessons speak better of GOP Governor and vice presidential nominee Mike Pence and his predecessor Mitch Daniels than they do Mr. Obama’s policies.

Mr. Obama touted his auto bailout, which he said rescued the city’s recreational vehicle industry that in 2009 was responsible in some way for about 70% of Elkhart’s employment. The cyclical RV industry has recovered along with the economy, but then so has the rest of the state. The most interesting statistic is that only about 60% of Elkhart’s jobs are still tied to RV sales as the economy has diversified.

All states have seen declines in the jobless rate, and Indiana’s has fallen to 5% in May from 8.4% in 2013 when Mr. Pence became Governor. The Indiana difference is that the rate has fallen even as the labor force has increased by nearly 187,000. Many states have seen their jobless rates fall in part because so many people have left the labor force, driving down the national labor participation rate to lows not seen since the 1970s. The Illinois workforce has grown by only about 71,000 in the same period, though it is roughly twice as large. Indiana is adding jobs fast enough that people are rejoining the workforce.

The Indiana turnaround began under Mr. Daniels, who took office in 2004 after 16 years of Democratic governors. His command to state employees was “we are here to raise the disposable income of Hoosiers.”

Mr. Daniels inherited a budget mess but eight years later Indiana was a rare state with a triple-A credit rating. He toyed briefly with raising the top personal income-tax rate, which we criticized at the time and was stopped by the legislature. He proceeded to cut the state corporate tax rate to 6.5% from 8.5%. He also took a big political risk by contracting with a private company to operate the Indiana toll road for $3.8 billion. CONTINUE AT SITE