Daily Archives: 26 August 2014

The Administration’s Considerations Regarding Resurgent Terrorism

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Here we are, with the terrorist gang, ISIS, butchering American journalists, doing their best to exterminate Yezidis, Christians, fellow Muslims who don’t think like these thugs do, et al. Here we are with ISIS continuing to make significant military gains after their blitz through Iraq to the outskirts of Baghdad. Here we are with ISIS having successfully seized a military airfield in Syria.

And here we are with President Barack Obama still…dithering…about what to do about these terrorists. After all, despite these terrorists having announced that they intend to fly their flag over the White House—our White House—despite these terrorists continuing their butchery of the innocents of other nations, the innocents of nations who would be our allies were we to allow them, the innocents of nations who would be our friends were we to allow them, American innocents, he’s still…not doing anything. And his military chief is assuring him—and us—that these terrorists, who’re sworn to do us harm, are not a direct threat to our nation.

With this background, Colleen McCain Nelson and Adam Entous in The Wall Street Journal, argued in all seriousness that

President Barack Obama faces pressure at home and in the Middle East to quickly step up strikes at Islamic State militants….

They also trotted out a roster of politicians applying that purported pressure: Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC), Congressman Adam Schiff (D, CA), even Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel all saying that the US needs to do “something more” about ISIS.

But Obama feels none of this pressure. This is amply demonstrated by his behavior surrounding his (actually quite stirring) speech condemning the butchery of James Foley, that journalist mentioned above. He reluctantly interrupted his Martha’s Vineyard vacation to make the speech, and within the hour following that speech, he was back on the golf course, yokking it up with his capitalist and lobbyist cronies.

This unpressured president also is unlikely to allow any meaningful action because, after all, the war in Iraq is ended, al-Qaeda is on the run, and Osama bin Laden is dead. And ISIS is just junior varsity, anyway.

And all of it is of a piece with this guy, who occasionally sits in the President’s chair, putting the Palestinian Authority terrorists on the same moral plain as Israel.

No, this administration is unlikely to do anything beyond idle chit-chat about terrorism.

Obamacare and Jobs

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The results are starting to come in, via three independently done polls by three separate Federal Reserve Banks.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia:

  • 78.8% of businesses in the district have made no change to the number of workers they employ as the specific result of ObamaCare
  • 3% are hiring more
  • 18.2% are cutting jobs and employees
  • 18% shifted the composition of their workforce to a higher proportion of part-time labor
  • 88.2% of the roughly half of businesses that modified their health plans as a result of ObamaCare passed along the costs through increasing the employee contribution to premiums, an effective cut in wages

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York asked about the “number of workers you employ.”

  • 21% of Empire State manufacturers and 16.9% of service firms answered “reducing.”

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta:

  • 34% of businesses planned to hire more part-time workers than in the past, mostly because of a rise in the relative costs of their full-time colleagues

And the pièce de résistance:

  • ObamaCare’s labor effects would be concentrated in some industries with relatively low-wage or marginal workers.

Hmm….